Film

Unemployed: The Destiny of Millions

1933 · 21m · Documentary

Willy Zielke was a brilliant photographer and filmmaker from Łodź who suffered greatly at the hands of the Nazis: His German feature films of the 1930s, Arbeitslos and Das Stahltier, were banned; Leni Riefenstahl made use of him to conceive, direct, and shoot the prologue for Olympia, but gave him no credit; and later, in a mentally incapacitated state, he was confined to an insane asylum where he was forcibly sterilized, only to be released after five years in 1942 so that Riefenstahl could make use of him once again on the final shooting of Tiefland. Zielke’s 1933 film Arbeitslos, commissioned by a Maffei railway company unemployment shelter, presented a despairing portrait of a nation in near-total collapse.

• Willy ZielkeDirector

Release date

January 1, 1933

Status

Released

Original language

English

Runtime

21m

Genres

Documentary