After the fall of the Berlin Wall, citizens of East Germany had to get used to a new way of consuming, working, and living. New-found freedoms were a breath of fresh air for many but in the chaos leading up to reunification with West Germany, the experience was also disconcerting.
Self - Narrator (voice)
After the fall of the Berlin Wall, citizens of East Germany had to get used to a new way of consuming, working, and living. New-found freedoms were a breath of fresh air for many but in the chaos leading up to reunification with West Germany, the experience was also disconcerting.
2024-11-14
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This film undertakes a journey into the amazing parallel universe of East Berlin’s fashion designers and experts in the art of survival. For, in the midst of the constraints of life in the GDR, there existed a fantasy world where it was possible to dance to another tune, be individual and even provocative. The most important characteristic of this bohemian scene was one’s per- sonal style. But this certainly wasn’t something that could be bought off the peg in the GDR. In this parallel universe it was up to you to create your own individual image – with your own hands. This film tells the story of the desires, the passion and the dreams that were tried and tested, lived and performed in the shadow of the Berlin Wall.
In a world divided by the Iron Curtain, East Germany sought to carve its niche in the technological race. Enter "Robotron" - a name that seamlessly blended "robot" and "electronics." This wasn't just a brand; it was an ambitious answer to the West's technological advancements, a testament to the GDR’s drive to match, if not surpass, Western innovation. Drawing inspiration from the corporate giants of the West, the GDR‘s government merged various businesses to form this tech behemoth. With 16 major hubs in Central Germany alone, it was clear: "Robotron" was to be the DDR's technological crown jewel. But what was the Socialist Unity Party (SED), the GDR's ruling party, envisioning with this grand venture? How did "Robotron" navigate the challenges of operating within a socialist planned economy, while striving for global excellence? And as it grew to dominate East Germany's tech landscape, why did it always seem to be one step behind the leading global tech powers?
Stalinstadt, East Germany, 1956. While the Hungarian uprising against Soviets is taking place, teenage members of a classroom of the local school perform a seemingly harmless act that causes unexpected consequences.
In August of 1914, amidst the public ecstasy surrounding the impending war, Hans Gastl, the young son of a Munich bürger, makes a decision: he will not take part in this war. This resolution signifies a turning point in his life; a farewell to his class and his family.
A young soldier enters Germany with Soviet troops at the end of WWII, feeling like a stranger in his homeland. As he meets Germans, he grapples with his ambivalence, realizing he is both a victor and one of the vanquished. His inquisitive nature leads him to confront the atrocities and lies he encounters along the way.
This report was broadcast on ARD in 1993. In 43 minutes, the development of psychiatry "in the third year after reunification" is shown using two institutions in the new federal states as examples. A touchstone for all of psychiatry and disability care to this day. The film shows a shocking way in which disabled people are treated. The commentary uses the perspective of those affected. 50 years after euthanasia in Germany, this documentary reminds us of this once again.
Over the past hundred years, dramatic social upheavals have taken place in the name of Karl Marx's theories. In Western Europe, the student movement of 1968 and the Eurocommunists were inspired. And in recent times, the thinker has experienced a renaissance.
Two families attempt a daredevil plan to escape the GDR with a homemade hot air balloon, but it crashes just before the border. The Stasi finds traces of this attempt to escape and immediately starts investigations, while the two families are forced to build a new escape balloon. With each passing day the Stasi is closer on their heels – a nerve-wracking race against time begins.
Dragan Wende has lived in Berlin since the '70s and has seen the city change through the years. His nephew comes to live with him as Dragan remembers the better days he lived as a Yugoslavian immigrant in a divided city.
In 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.
2024 is likely to be a decisive year for Sahra Wagenknecht's political future. In the arena of power, she might assume a role that she is already very familiar with. In the early years following the fall of the Berlin Wall, Sahra Wagenknecht became the "most famous face" of the PDS, the successor party to the SED. Yet, even as the youngest member of the party's executive board, she was considered a "disruptive factor." She is unyielding and swims against the tide. Sahra Wagenknecht does not distance herself from Stalinism, nor from the Berlin Wall, and wishes for a reformed GDR.
During the 16th Workers' Festival in Dresden in 1976, a student group of Chilean emigrants paints a mural symbolically depicting the activity of the Unidad Popular during Salvador Allende's reign. Festival guests comment on this work. Music by Chilean music group Jaspampa, formed in Leipzig in 1972.
Docudrama about life, career and breakdown of Erich Mielke, the former Security chief of East Germany.
Explration of today’s East German identity, shaped by history, hopes, and upheaval. Through multimedia storytelling, it explores lives between the Elbe and Oder, intergenerational socialization, and self-perception three decades after reunification. Are the new Länder lost to nostalgia and extremism or still salvageable?
In 1989, thirteen GDR scientists and technicians set off from East Berlin to the Georg Forster research station in the Antarctic. During their expedition the Berlin Wall fell on November 9th. Cut off from the images that go around the world, the men can only experience the historical events passively. When they returned in the spring of 1991, their homeland was a foreign country. The documentary reconstructs the thoughts and feelings of the East German researchers on the basis of eyewitness accounts, diary excerpts, letters, film material, grandiose landscape shots from the location of the action and unique photos to make the consequences of the events tens of thousands of kilometers away on the small GDR expedition in the middle of the eternal ice tangible.
Seven directors remember their childhood and youth; to the 50s and 60s in the GDR. They appear to be curious, vulnerable children and teenagers who also want to be cool (even though the word doesn't exist for them yet). They live in well-adjusted or resistant families. Some only in half because their father left for the West. Depending on their family background, they want or should help build the new, better Germany.
A film on the surveillance and the control in East Germany also speaks about it - representing extreme and almost unbelievable image of a society which has acquired one super-narrative and developed a system which makes it impossible to even speak about the possibility of anything outside it.
Documents important parts of the East German rock music scene of the late 1980s, from well-established bands like Silly, to underground rock bands like Feeling B. This road movie features young people using music to express their take on life, opposition to their parents' generation and opinions on the social and political climate in East Germany. It includes clips from concerts and interviews with fans and members of various bands, such as Feeling B's Christian Lorenz and Paul Landers, now members of Rammstein.
When Chris Gueffroy becomes increasingly disillusioned with his life in 1980s East Germany, he hatches a plan with his friend, Christian Gaudian, to escape the isolated Eastern bloc state without telling his mother, Karin. The pair believe that the standing order to shoot anyone who crosses the Berlin Wall, as ordered by the General Secretary of the Socialist Unity Party, Erich Honecker, has been lifted due to the state visit of Swedish PM Ingvar Carlsson. The young men seize their chance and attempt the fateful escape to the west.
Docudrama 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.