In the Ruhr Region

‘I Ruhrområdet is one of the most revolting slices of German reality that I have seen on screen. The reality of the Ruhrgebiet, the reality of German communism, the reality of the filmmaker Nestler, who we all drove out of the country – German television, which took the possibility to work away from him, the board of trustees that refused to give him money, the critics, who devoted a few anxiously benevolent sentences to his work at best. I Ruhrområdet is the document of a terrible frustration, comparable only with Straub’s Not Reconciled. Nestler confronts the viewer with images from the Ruhr area. Images and voices that seem as if frozen. It is the panorama view of a defeat. They sit at tables with clean tablecloths and in front of consoles in white shirts and neckties and speak in ossified phrases about the struggle against the Kapp Putsch and fascism, sometimes there are two, sometimes three old men. Nestler doesn’t allow the viewer scorn or pity, only rage.’ Enno Patalas, 1968 (Berlinale)