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No west runway

The fight over the “Runway West” at Frankfurt Airport reaches its climax in 1981/82. 220,000 Hessian citizens sign their names to initiate a petition for a referendum against the construction of the runway. Despite this, the petition for a referendum is shot down and the anti-runway movement, the largest regional citizens’ initiative in the Federal Republic, is criminalized.

In a mixture of documentary footage, sketchy play scenes, anti-runway concert recordings and experimental montages, the filmmakers attempt to present the process of political alienation of the citizens from the existing system in a comprehensible way. In six exemplary chapters with titles such as “There must be something we can do” or “Now we’ve had enough”, the film traces the stages of political development – from an initial, still unarticulated discontent to resistance through the throwing of paint bags.

Cinema documentary | 115 min. | 1981/82
Directors and written by Gunter Oehme, Michael Smeaton, Wolfgang Schneider, Rolf Silber, Thomas Frickel, Regine Heuser
Camera Marian Czura, Peter Dick, Wolfram Dormann, Ralf Herber, Ilse Meyer, Pavel Schnabel, Wilfried Voigt,
Wilfried Zeckai