After WWII, cinema was everywhere: in movie theatres, public squares, factories, schools, trial courts, trains, museums, and political meetings. Seen today, documentaries and newsreels, as well as the amateur production, show the kaleidoscopic portrait of a changing Europe. How did these cinematic images contribute to shaping the new societies emerging from the ashes of war, both in the Western and in the Eastern bloc? Why were they so crucial in framing and regulating new places and practices, political systems, economic dynamics, educational frameworks, and memory communities? This edited volume explores the multiple ways nonfiction cinema reconfigured public spaces, collective participation, democratisation, and governmentality between 1944 and 1956. Looking back at it through a transnational perspective and the critical category of spatiality, nonfiction cinema appears in a new light: simultaneously as a specifically situated and as a highly mobile medium, it was a fundamental agent in reshaping Europe’s shared identity and culture in a defining decade.

Lucie Cesalkova is an Associate Professor at the Department of Film Studies, Charles University, and an editor at Prague’s National Film Archive. At the Institute of Contemporary History, CAS, she was the Principal Investigator of the HERA funded international project Visual Culture of Trauma, Obliteration, and Reconstruction in Post-World War II Europe. In her research she focuses on nonfiction and documentary film, educational and advertising film, on film exhibition and moviegoing.

Johannes Praetorius-Rhein is a research associate at the Konrad Wolf Film University of Babelsberg (Potsdam) and an adjunct lecturer at Goethe-University Frankfurt am Main. Previously, he was a researcher at the Goethe-University for the ViCTOR-E-project. His research focuses on postwar cinema, Jewish film history, and producer studies.

Perrine Val is a film historian. She is a lecturer at the Université Paul Valéry-Montpellier 3. Her research focuses on transnational cinematographic exchanges during the Cold War. She published a book based on her Ph.D. thesis about the cinematographic relationships between France and the GDR, entitled Les relations cinématographiques entre la France et la RDA: entre camaraderie, bureaucratie et exotisme (1946–1992) (Villeneuve d’Asq: Presses Universitaires du Septentrion, 2021).

Paolo Villa is postdoctoral researcher at the University of Pavia, after being a member of the ViCTOR-E project at the University of Udine. Alongside articles on journals and edited volumes, he authored a book on art documentaries in Italy, La camera di Stendhal. Il film sull’arte in Italia (1945–1970). His research focuses on non-fiction and industrial cinema, the mediatisation of cultural heritage and landscape, the history of movie theaters in Italy.

Preface: (Re)Building Europe Through Cinema (Studies) - Vinzenz Hediger
Frames of Reconstruction: An Introduction - Lucie Cesalkova, Johannes Praetorius-Rhein, Perrine Val, Paolo Villa

Section 1 Locating Non-Fiction Film
1. Itinerari Italiani: A Visual Information Campaign to Reclaim Italian Regionalisms and Remap US-Italian Economic Interdependence under the Marshall Plan - Regina M. Longo
2. Documentary Filmmaking in Postwar Germany 1945–55. An Essay on the History of Production, Distribution, and Technology - Jeanpaul Goergen, Kay Hoffmann
3. Finding the Best Time for Shorts. Non-Fiction Film, Non-Stop Cinemas, and the Temporalities of Everyday Life of Post-WWII Audiences - Lucie Cesalkova
4. Co-Producing Postwar Socialist (Re)Construction. Transnational Documentaries in Eastern Europe - Marsha Siefert
5. From Enemy Images to Friend Images after WWII or How France Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Germany - Matthias Steinle, Perrine Val

Section 2 - Reconstructing Realities
1. “Room to Move and Space to Play”. Architecture and the Marshall Plan’s Cinematic Reconfiguration of Space - Maria Fritsche, Dennis Pohl
2. Screening Dortmund in Ruins. The Role of Elisabeth Wilms’s Postwar Film Footage in City Politics and Local Remembrance Culture - Alexander Stark
3. From Rubble to Ruins. War Destruction, Postwar Reconstruction and Tamed Modernization - Francesco Pitassio, Johannes Praetorius-Rhein, Perrine Val
4. Screening (at) the Workplace. Postwar Non-Fiction Cinema and the Gendered and Political Spaces of Labor - Lucie Cesalkova, Simone Dotto
5. Choreographies of Public Space. Non-Fiction Film and Performances of Citizenship in Postwar Europe - Johannes Praetorius-Rhein, Andrea Pruchova Hruzova

Section 3 - Spaces of Cultural Trauma
1. Ruins, Iconic Sites and Cultural Heritage in Italy and Poland in The Aftermath of World War II - Rossella Catanese, Ania Szczepanska
2. Moving Accountability. Trials, Transitional Justice, and Documentary Cinema - Sylvie Lindeperg, Francesco Pitassio
3. (De)Constructing the Architect. Modern Architecture between Praise and Criticism in Postwar Non-Fiction Cinema - Perrine Val, Paolo Villa
4. Restructuring (Post)Colonial Relationships. European Empires between Decolonization, Trusteeships, and a New Projection in Africa - Gianmarco Mancosu

Section 4 - Creating New Paths
1. Virtual Topographies of Memory. Liberation Films as Mobile Models of Atrocity Sites - Tobias Ebbrecht-Hartmann & Fabian Schmidt
2. Curating Reconstruction in the Digital Realm. Online Exhibition Frames of Reconstruction - Rossella Catanese, Andrea Pruchova Hruzova
3. Teaching (with) Postwar Cinema. Fostering Media Education and Transnational Historical Thinking Through Non-Fiction Film Heritage - Ondrej Havac, Paolo Villa

List of Abbreviations
Bibliography
Index