DEFA-Studio für Dokumentarfilme

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 friend? Leontes tries to find out about it...

Young East German men starting their compulsary 18-month military service at a Rostock garrison.

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.

The final exam of sixteen and seventeen year olds at the end of the 10th grade. The individual in the minutes in which he is supposed to show what he can do and who he is. A last class party before the community ends and one goes apart.

In two chapters the film shows men in divided Germany willing to leave their country. In the first chapter, East-Germans are shown who leave their wives and children behind in order to live in the Federal Republic of Germany. In the second chapter, unmarried West-Germans try to move to the German Democratic Republic.

Portrait of Hans Globke, jurist at the ministry of interior during the Third Reich and co-author of an official commentary to the Nuremberg Laws of 1935, the Nazi Racial Legislation. While Adenauer appointed him Secretary of State in 1953, he was sentenced to lifelong imprisonment in absentia by a GDR court in 1963.

East German-Syrian co-production about archaeological excavations in Syria.

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, and their place in the world. Despite everything, hope persists.

The first summarizing film about the path of the class and the common stations in life. But also about the different paths in the profession, in love, marriage and family. As well as a soldier. A group chronicle, viewed from the historical distance of the 35th year of the end of the 2nd World War and after 18 years of shooting in peace, which ensured everyone the first human right: they were allowed to live.

Impressions of a playground in Berlin. It is also the playing field of the elderly chess and card players - counterpoint to the argument of isolation and emptiness in old age.

Film about the training and plowing championships of the socialist countries in Hungary. The title alludes to the popular record "Lyrik, Jazz & Prosa", which was later discontinued and on which Manfred Krug reads the Soschtschenko satire "Die Kuh im Propeller", which makes fun of "Flugwesen" in the Soviet Union as a sign of modernization in the countryside too.

Two narrators read the letters of unknown people and tell about the fate of individuals, their work, love and life.

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 western countries. Director Roland Steiner had access to such young East Germans in the late 1980s. Over the course of four years, he brought them before the camera in an attempt to understand what drew them to these groups.

A two-part East German documentary tracing Russia’s transformation from the Tsarist Empire to the Soviet Union, from the 1917 October Revolution to the achievements of the space program. Directed by Andrew Thorndike and Annelie Thorndike, the film assembles extensive archival footage to chart political upheaval, ideological consolidation, and technological ambition in twentieth-century Russia. Produced by DEFA and first broadcast on East German television in 1963.

A class reunion of the twenty-somethings in the old school. What one remembers, what the individual has new to tell. One of them: Marieluise. Her love, her work, her demands on herself and the world into which she is coming of age.

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 short about Hungarian poet Miklós Radnóti (1909-1944).

Angela Davis visiting the German Democratic Republic. A film about the people she met and her impressions.

Documentary with beautiful black-and-white CinemaScope shots, which combined impressive scenes from a trip to the Ukraine with historical reminiscences. The censors criticized the "too narrow and too intimate view" of the Soviet Union; they didn't like the fact that bells were ringing, that a chauffeur from the film crew or an elderly peasant couple recalled the horrors of war or that Nikolai Gogol and Yevgeny Yevtushenko were quoted - that was considered backward-looking. Without the knowledge of the filmmakers Karlheinz Mund and Christian Lehmann, the film was shortened and mutilated; the seventeen minutes that were allowed for a public screening are only the torso of a large draft.

Documentary short about the construction of the Markersbach Pumped Storage Power Plant in East Germany.