Initiated in 1933 as an agent of employment and national unification, a “cultural monument” to modernity, purpose and progress, the socio-political Autobahn project needed selling to a population for whom its infrastructure was so new as to be alien.
Far from a conventional chronology, in Reichsautobahn “one picture answers another”, as Bitomsky choreographs the multitude of Third Reich produced films, propaganda and cultural artefacts, alongside interviews and a fiercely probing voiceover, to reveal the complexities, imaginaries, and contradictions, of a project of social as much as industrial engineering.
We are delighted to welcome Tom Wilkinson (writer, historian, and History Editor at the Architectural Review) to introduce this screening.
