DEFA-Studio für Dokumentarfilme

Documentary about the sisters Lene and Berta who live in a village in Thuringia.

Documentary film

The film is an appeal by the International Democratic Women's Federation against a new war, calling on all mothers of the world to protect their children.

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

Spring 1988: a cinematic chronicle of the small town of Zehdenick an der Havel in the Mark Brandenburg. Brickworks have determined the rhythm of life in Zehdenick for exactly 100 years. Seasoned brickmakers and young skilled workers speak frankly and critically about their working and living conditions and their futile efforts to improve them. The film is the first part of the Märkische Trilogie, which Volker Koepp shot "over the course of time about a brickworks in the small town of Zehdenick in the Mark Brandenburg. The very sensitively and atmospherically designed film was withheld by the GDR censors of the time. A depressing report about outdated production methods and disillusioned people."

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

The desperate private war of a Vietnam veteran of the US Army. The Film explores the biggest amok run in the history of the USA at that point of time. The story of a mass murder in San Diego on July 18 1984 is told by showing reports of a local TV station. It turns out that the amok was partly caused by traumatic experiences during the Vietnam War.

A documentary about the village Kienitz at the river Oder, about the people, their life, their history.

Documentary about the small city of Rheinsberg, once the summer residence of Prussian princes. Average working class people comment on the history of this special place.

Only two months after the fall of the Berlin Wall, in January 1990, almost two hundred controversial East German visual and performance artists—including Jürgen Böttcher, the Autoperforation Artists, AG Geige, Via Lewandowsky, Trak Wendisch, Conny Hege, Klaus Killisch, Helga Paris and Hanns Schimansky—presented works rarely shown in the GDR at the exhibition space in the former La Villette slaughterhouses on the outskirts of Paris.

Part 3 of the Wittstock series also shows the surroundings of the textile factory. Older gentlemen in a pub reveal that two factories produced fabrics for the military here during the Second World War. In 1945, only a handful of handlooms remained. The contemporary witness does not say why. It was probably too sensitive to reveal the reason on camera in 1978: The Soviet occupying power dismantled many production facilities in the GDR after the end of the war and transported them to the home of the victorious Red Army.

Portrait of 80 year old Gustav J., born in Lithuania, who became a blacksmith and whose paths of life led him to East Prussia, Russia and finally to Germany.

Volker Koepp documents life in the Dorotheenstadt in Berlin-Mitte, which was called "Feuerland" in the 19th century.

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.

Protests in Hasselbach in the Hunsrück Mountains against the deployment of 96 Cruise Missiles.

A card game is introduced: “Nuclear War". An entertaining, jolly card game for between two and six players, reads an ad for a game made in USA.

A film about Jewish cemeteries in East Berlin, based on a screenplay by Günter Kunert, with text by Rabbi Martin Riesenburger. There are shots of gravestones and inscriptions – deported, murdered, perished; in Auschwitz or Theresienstadt. Commentary reminds us of the victims – "in 1933, 160,564 Jewish citizens lived in Berlin; in 1945, 3,500".

Documentary film about the Spanish Civil War.

Hosted by futurist moderator Chris Wallasch, this playful documentary speculates on what love and relationships might look like in the year 2002. Through interviews with travelers at Berlin-Schönefeld Airport and a collage of witty flashbacks and imagined flashforwards, the film reflects on enduring questions of romance, family, and changing social norms.