City of Toys combines Alan Marcus’ 2001 interview with legendary filmmaker Leni Riefenstahl with an exploration of centuries of antisemitism. As she recalls of her iconic 1935 documentary, Triumph of the Will, on the annual Nuremberg Nazi Party Rally almost seventy years later: “I had no ideals. I only did my duty. It was a commission I carried out.” Beyond its notoriety in 20th century history, Nuremberg was also known as one of the toymaking capitals of the world and until the Nazi era many of its major toymakers were Jewish. Nuremberg still hosts the world’s largest trade toy fair. The film subtly intertwines narratives on Adolf Hitler and Riefenstahl’s representation of the Nazi movement with Nuremberg’s historical bedrock of antisemitism and the role of its Jewish toymakers. As film historian Robert Rosenstone has written of Marcus’ work, “I would call it a kind of poetic history that may in fact deny the possibility of history at all.”

Director Biography - Alan Marcus

Alan Marcus is Professor in Creative and Cultural Practice at the University of Aberdeen in Scotland. As a filmmaker and cultural historian, he often explores themes associated with the impact of mass tourism and urbanization on iconic post-traumatic sites. Works include films on the US/Mexican border controversy, environmental impact of over development on Waikiki and a current project on climate change in a Canadian Inuit community on the Arctic Ocean. His book publications include Relocating Eden (1995) and Visualising the City (2008) and numerous articles in journals such as Visual Anthropology, The Journal of Architecture and the History of Photography. He is a fellow of the Royal Historical Society and the Cambridge Philosophical Society and a member of the Director’s Guild of America.