Movies: Defa Studio Fur Wochenschau Und Dokumentarfilme

A woman born in 1949, the year the GDR was founded, talks about her life based on 35 images in her family album that each represent one year. This short was to premiere on the occasion of the 35th anniversary of East Germany. Officials rejected it, h...

A brief history of the emergence and artistic innovations of tango in 19th-century Argentina and Europe. The film offers a mosaic of tango melodies, art works, dance performances, historical footage, photographs of Buenos Aires at the turn of the 20t...

Revolution and resignation within the changes at the end of the GDR....

A locomotive journey traversing the North to the South of the German Democratic Republic on the eve of its dissolution. Labourers, punks, mothers, intellectuals, young and old are implored to reflect on their life choices, the sacrifices they've made...

An international anthology about the struggles of female workers around the world....

A little man wants to order a warm coat from a fabric he has brought with him to a tailor's workshop in winter. He is laughed at and told that orders for this type of garment are only accepted in the summer - after all, they work to a schedule. When ...

Posing as West German journalists, East German documentary filmmakers Heynowski and Scheumann pay a visit to the notorious Nazi-turned-mercenary Siegfried “Kongo” Müller, pump him with booze, and get him to talk about his life and war campaigns in Af...

In early summer 1989, Helke Misselwitz portrays young musicians in a band who produce their music on other people’s waste items. The four boys call themselves "Bulk Rubbish" and they drum out their resentment, having grown up on the new housing estat...

Das russische Wunder (The Russian Miracle) (1963) is a two-part East German documentary directed by Annelie and Andrew Thorndike. The documentary chronicles Russia’s dramatic transformation from the Tsarist Empire to the Soviet Union, covering key hi...

A moving short portrait of Karl Marx’s family and their living conditions during their time in London....

From an official perspective, marginal youth culture did not exist in East Germany. The topic of subcultures was taboo in the GDR, and groups such as goths, skinheads, anti-skins, punks and neo-Nazis were dismissed as social deviations promoted by we...

Using contemporary artistic representations in words and pictures, the documentary intends to create an overall view of the historical significance of the 450th anniversary of the Reformation in the historical image of the GDR. In terms of content, t...

Started in the summer of 1961, even before the Wall was built, the film becomes an explanation after this historical event as to why things can no longer go on as they were before. Unmistakably, as in almost all of Karl Gass' films, the passion with ...

Documentary film...

The story of the Grünthal peasants' uprising against the commander who oppresses and exploits them....

Archive footage of bomb detonations during the Second World War combined with abstract graphic elements which show the destructive potential of modern nuclear missiles. Together the images are a silent warning of armament and war....

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, opposi...

Leontes, king of Sicily, tries to convince his friend Polyxenes, king of Bohemia, to stay longer as his guest. But only Hermione, Leontes' wife, can talk Polyxenes into not leaving. Leontes gets suspicious. Is his wife having an affair with his frien...

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 contempo...

In this documentary, Joachim Hellwig uses partly unpublished footage to shed light on a dark chapter of German history and shows the entanglements between the politicians' claims to power and the interests of industry and business in Germany from the...