László Moholy Nagy’s documentaries made in the late Weimar Republic, during the rise of National Socialism in Berlin (Berliner Stilleben, Grosstadt Zigeuner, 1931–32), have been usually neglected by art and film historians, as opposed to his experimental, artistic, pedagogic activities and other avant-garde films. This situation has been changing in the last decade as a result of the influence of critical cultural approaches. Film and media archaeology undermine the descriptive, systematising aspects that take into account mostly formal devices, separating ‘the poetic from the political’. In his recently published monograph, German film historian Jan Sahli started to map Moholy’s film oeuvre, focusing on its leitmotiv Sinneserweiterung [extension of consciousness]. In my presentation, following the trends of new film history (Thomas Elsaesser) and using the results of my research on Roma images in Hungarian film history, I highlight Moholy’s affectedness, and analyse his films as memory patterns (Jan Assmann), stressing their importance in the collective memory of Romani people. Borrowing and expanding the term Kunstwollen used by Austrian art historian Alois Riegl, I argue that László Moholy-Nagy, after his return to Berlin in the years of emigration, due to the changes in social, political and cultural life, turned his attention to social issues and started formal experiences of social force using the medium of film in order to express his resistance against the strengthening fascist tendencies.