A long-term observation of the forgotten former “Gestapo grounds” in Berlin 1986-2013.
Self (archive footage)
Self (archive footage)
Self
Self
Self

A long-term observation of the forgotten former “Gestapo grounds” in Berlin 1986-2013.
2016-11-09
0
The 5th anniversary of the inner-German wall to West Germany and West Berlin is on the agenda. The necessity of erecting the border is illustrated by comparing the situation in 1939 and the situation in the summer of 1961 with regard to the "threat of intervention" by the Western powers. Berlin people and GDR border guards are interviewed.
9.0After the fall of the Berlin Wall, thousands of documents were hastily shredded by the dreaded GDR political police. 16,000 bags filled with six million pieces of paper were found. Thanks to the meticulous work of technology, the destinies of men and women who had been spied on and recorded without their knowledge could be reconstructed.
A documentary about the deconstruction of the Berlin Wall which makes no use of vocal commentary but instead focuses on visual elements. From the Potsdamer Platz to the Brandenburg Gate, the camera captures the historic events from all sides and different angles: on the one hand there are news reporters and tourists from all over the world taking pictures, children selling pieces of the wall to passers-by, and people celebrating New Year's Eve, on the other we see abandoned subway stations and officials with blank looks on their faces.
7.0In February 1986 they received the call of a fatherland that no longer exists: four young GDR citizens on the verge of adulthood see themselves forced, like so many others in East and West Germany, to do their one and a half years of military service. What is special: Their service area is the border system, an anti-imperialist protective wall according to their superiors, death strips and prison bars for a population incapacitated in naked reality. Now, seventeen years later, there is a reunion with the comrades and the old post. This feature film, which was the first in reunified Germany to deal with the inner workings of the GDR border troops, tells of life on the fence, the associated contradictions and some hot phases in the Cold War.
7.0Short documentary about artist Keith Haring, detailing his involvement in the New York City graffiti subculture, his opening of the Pop Shop, and the social commentary present in his paintings and drawings.
0.0Rock and roll's part in bringing down the Berlin Wall and smashing the Iron Curtain is told from the perspective of rockers who played at the time, on both sides of the Wall, and from survivors of the communist regimes who recall the lifeline that rock music provided them.
0.0“Liberty Train – Bürger’s Long Journey” sheds light on the events of the PEACEFUL REVOLUTION of 1989 from different perspectives. It centres on the eyewitnesses who, together with thousands of other people who had fled East Germany, were in the garden of the West German Embassy in Prague on the evening of the 30 September 1989.
The documentary tells the story of the reunification from the perspective of six teenagers from East Germany.
5.7Marcel Ophüls interviews various important Eastern European figures for their thoughts on the reunification of Germany and the fall of Communism.
7.1Reveals an alternate history of the post-war world. This is a version of history where, in contrast to what we are all told, fascist ideology prevailed. The story of Klaus Barbie, Nazi torturer, American spy, tool of repressive right-wing regimes, is symbolic of the real relationship that the "Western" governments had with fascism and makes us see the world as it is today - and the politicians that inhabit it - in a different way.
8.0Docudrama telling the story of a building with a breath taking career that began in the empire, flourished in the Weimar Republic, perished in the Nazi dictatorship, and was rebuilt after its partial destruction.
7.0Over the course of a fifty-year career, the British band The Cure has released fourteen highly successful studio albums; but it was their 1989 album Disintegration, released during a pivotal year for Europe and the world, that would capture the imagination of so many fans.
0.0On 3 October 1990 DDR stopped existing as a state and became the Federal Republic of Germany. The past had been overturned. The new had not yet taken shape. The rejoicing over the fall of the Berlin wall. The bitterness and shame when the doors opened to cabinet of horrors at Stasi. Uncertainty and worry about the future. Everyone's battle against everyone for survival. In the form of a travelogue, freelancing journalist Rainer Hartleb depicts all the mixed feelings that flow from the country that no longer exists.
0.0David Hasselhoff, better known for his roles in “Knight Rider” and “Baywatch” released a song titled, “Looking for Freedom” the year before the Berlin Wall came down. He performed it on top of the Berlin Wall to a million people during the biggest New Year's Eve party Germany had ever seen. Twenty five years later, David revisits the now-reunited capital, investigating what is left of the Wall, and explores what it meant in the context of the Cold War dividing Communism in the East from democracy in the West. Along his journey he meets extraordinary people who dreamt of freedom and risked their lives trying to overcome the dreaded Berlin Wall.
5.0For 50 years, Berlin was the symbol of the Cold War. The city at the heart of the intelligence war between the US and the Soviet bloc. Thousands of KGB or CIA, agents observed each other, cogs in the biggest information war in history.
6.5A retrospective look at the youth cultures born in the German Democratic Republic. A celebration of the lust for life, a contemporary trip into the world of skate, a tale on three heroes and their boards, from their childhood in the seventies, through their teenage rebellion in the eighties and the summer of 1989, when their life changed forever, to 2011.
0.0Historic archives shed new light on the secret history of Klaus Barbie, head of the Gestapo in Lyon in 1943-44, with particular attention being given to the scandalous protections that the German and American secret services provided him with.