Immer bereit

Documentary (in colour) about the first youth meeting (Deutschlandtreffen der Jugend) in East Berlin in 1950.

1950-07-20 | de

Die sieben Geheimnisse der NVA

2018-11-30 | de

Becoming Black

In the 1960s, a white couple living in East Germany tells their dark-skinned child that her skin color is merely a coincidence. As a teenager, she accidentally discovers the truth. Years before, a group of African men came to study in a village nearby. Sigrid, an East German woman, fell in love with Lucien from Togo and became pregnant. But she was already married to Armin. The child is Togolese-East German filmmaker Ines Johnson-Spain. In interviews with Armin and others from her childhood years, she tracks the astonishing strategies of denial her parents, striving for normality, developed following her birth. What sounds like fieldwork about social dislocation becomes an autobiographical essay film and a reflection on themes such as identity, social norms and family ties, viewed from a very personal perspective.

2019-10-09 | de

What We Remember

Nine very private encounters with different people of the post-war generation and their memories of childhood and youth. Among others, the guitarist and singer Peter "Caesar" Gläser and the actress Christine Harbort. Roland Steiner asked his contemporaries about - "What we remember ...". All interviewees are as old as the state they live in. Nine CVs from the GDR are described. They have different professions, from skilled worker and scientist, nurse and saleswoman, actress or rock musician, even a minstrel is included. They remember what shaped them: Family, school, birthdays and hot summers, the happy moments and their own failures.

1984-09-14 | de

Look Out!

Hard, harder, hardest! This film orders you from the start to turn up the volume and pay attention. "Look out! We're Coming to Get You!" is a flood of images driven by a tempest of guitars. The film's creators jam 20 years of German music history into 120 minutes of film. Musicians from BLIND PASSENGERS, DIE SKEPTIKER, SANDOW and other bands explode their way through the film. Fans of the DEFA documentary "Flüstern und Schreien" ("Whisper and Shout") already know the stars of that film, Aljoscha, Paul and Flake of the band Feeling B. Here they have a chance to see how these musicians survived the period after the fall of the Berlin Wall and the "escalation of possibilities" that came with it. And you're allowed to laugh, too!

2003-11-29 | de

So klang die DEFA - Filmmusik aus Babelsberg

2018-09-26 | de

Pride & Attitude

The viewpoints of women from a country that no longer exists preserved on low-band U-matic tape. GDR-FRG. Courageous, self-confident and emancipated: female industry workers talk about gaining autonomy.

2025-10-09 | de

Erzähle deine Geschichte - Die DDR in 30 Begriffen

2020-10-03 | de

Das letzte Finale der DDR – Zwischen Mauerfall und Wiedervereinigung

In the midst of the transition towards reunification and a market economy, two teams meet for the last time in the final of the FDGB Cup shortly after the 1990 Volkskammer elections: favorites Dynamo Dresden and Polizeisportverein Schwerin. Matthias Hufmann and Benjamin Unger take a look back 30 years later.

2020-06-02 | de

Auf der Oder

Documentary reports on the annual icing of the Oder in the 160-kilometer border area between the GDR and the People's Republic of Poland. Icebreakers from both countries with experienced skippers join forces to make the international waterway between Frankfurt and Szczecin navigable again. Everyone works hard as a team and even a broken-down ship cannot stop them from achieving their goal. A look back at the winter of 1947 with its flooding shows what the freezing of the river and the subsequent thaw can do if the ice floes are not drained into the Baltic Sea via Lake Dammsch in good time. The skippers from both countries have known each other for years and trust each other; the camaraderie that has developed on the Oder unites the people, they control the river in winter for the common benefit of all.

1970-04-16 | de

From Us To Me / Vom Wir zum Ich

This first co-production between the GDR and Great Britain is intended to contribute to an understanding of the situation and attitudes of millions of working people in opposing social orders. Using the example of shipyard workers, fishermen, the brigade and family of a trade union active cook and unemployed person of various ages and professions in Newcastle on the one hand and a brigade of crane operators of the Warnowwerft and fishermen of the Warnemünde cooperative on the other hand, insights into the way of life and attitudes of people of our time are to be conveyed.

1988-11-29 | de

Hotel Astoria

At Hotel Astoria, the former hotspot of Leipzig, guests were served champagne and turtle soup while the Stasi listened in. Animated memories from times gone by.

2020-10-28 | de

I Love You All

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.

2004-02-07 | de

ABF-Memoiren

The documentary shows historical film footage from the workers' and farmers' faculties (ABF) of the GDR, which existed until 1962 and were intended to help level out class differences in the education sector by preparing mainly workers' and farmers' children for a university career.

1993-02-13 | de

DDR - die entsorgte Republik

2019-10-02 | de

In Syrien auf Montage

The film is a reportage showing the help of workers from the GDR in the industrial reconstruction of Syria. We witness the friendly relationship between workers from both countries, who are jointly involved in the construction of the cotton spinning mill in Homs. In impressive pictures the exoticism of the environment and the mentality of the Syrian hosts is shown. At the same time it becomes clear that the workers from the GDR become 'ambassadors of the GDR' through their collegial behaviour and good work.

1971-10-01 | de

Zielitz - Der Kampf ums Weiße Gold

2020-06-09 | de

East German Schlager is dead. Long live the East German Schlager!

Siegfried "Siggi" Trzoß, a radio moderator from East Berlin, is working tirelessly leading up to his anniversary and 900th show. The music his heart burns for is East German Schlager, a genre politically ignored at first and widely forgotten now. But Siggi keeps the dream alive to this day, making the hearts of seniors jump higher in nostalgia all over east Germany.

2023-12-01 | de

Go Trabi Go forever

2015-09-28 | de

Drei Frauen

2022-09-24 | de