"'Their Clouds Still Imprison Us': A Postmigrant Look at Racism, Labour Migration and Film in 1970s West Germany", the latest article by Till Kadritzke (Research Area 4: "Literary Currencies"), examines two television productions adapted from Aras Ören's long poems about the lives of Turkish migrant workers in the Berlin borough of Kreuzberg. Frau Kutzer und andere Bewohner der Naunynstraße (1973) and Kazim Akaya und andere Bewohner der Naunynstraße (1975) combine poetic voiceovers, fictionalised scenes and documentary footage to portray the lives of migrant workers and address their representation within the white German media establishment. Drawing on the concept of postmigration, Kadritzke situates the two productions within a forgotten archive of political cinema in Germany. By foregrounding racial capitalism and racist violence, the films illustrate postmigrant discourse while simultaneously pointing to some of its blind spots.

The article is part of Kadritzke's EXC 2020 project "Moving Images, Transforming Germanness: Race, Migration and Filmmaking in Germany, 1968–1989", which employs a postmigrant frame of reading to revisit German film archives of the 1970s and 1980s. 

   

Till Kadritzke. "'Their Clouds Still Imprison Us': A Postmigrant Look at Racism, Labour Migration and Film in 1970s West Germany." International Journal of Media & Cultural Politics 21.2–3: Political Cinemas (2025): 185–202.