Memory of the Future

When student activist Rudi Dutschke was shot at close range in Berlin by a far right supporter, he survived the attack but was forced to take exile in Britain. It triggered protest across Europe that culminated in the actions of May ‘68. History is never just one story. Dutschke’s initial welcome into the UK shifted from openness to suspicion to a politicised refusal of his right to remain, via a specially created tribunal partly held behind closed doors — a process that still mystifies his lawyers.

Fifty years on it’s the German leadership that’s arguing for an opening of European borders. In Britain, asylum claimants face that same closed-door form of tribunal.

History, resistance, law, right, left. What makes the world? In a divided Europe, this two-screen essay-film interrogates the citizen's power to shape the contemporary.

Thanks to the Elephant Trust and Whitstable Biennale.

Director: Sarah Wood. UK, 2018, two-screen video, 28 mins