Hochschule für Film und Fernsehen der DDR

A Little Boy in the ruins of World War II and the white lie of an old man - after a story by Wolfgang Borchert.

In interviews, several important GDR personalities and also GDR citizens comment on the events of October 1989.

Paul Celan’s poem echoes. A drive reveals a long-abandoned Gründerzeit villa in ruin. Inside, a woman in elegant WWI attire dances, then slumps in mourning. After the war she cleans, reappears in 1930s riding clothes amid radio discontent as a maid and housekeeper move through the halls. Mourning returns with WWII’s end. Post-war, she dances to American rhythms, breastfeeds under Soviet-occupation broadcasts. Beatles and Pink Floyd play as a woman in overalls emerges, memories of the century flooding her mind. She climbs into a Trabant Kübel, helmet beside her, determined to give the villa a new life.

A railway line is to be laid through remote Lusatian farmland. Surveyors herald the “new era” with their work. The events also leave their mark on the people. Stylistically idiosyncratic first feature film by a director who comes from documentary film. The story is told as a parable about the relationship between humans and progress, with the actors making extremely clever use of their freedom.

When Michael was released from the Jugendwerkhof at the age of 16, he said: "... There has to be controversy to make progress, to achieve something in life, to be a human being at all." Three years later, the movie tries to find out what has become of him.

Kollwitzplatz, Prenzlauer Berg: Children are playing and climbing all over the monument to Käthe Kollwitz, frowning adults are watching them. What would Gustav Seitz, the creator of the sculpture, say? Christa Mühl has asked him but reveals his answer only when the adults have finally disappeared. Until then, she constructs explosive matter as light as a feather, set to Belgian cembalo jazz and with the perky montage style that characterises her early documentary work. After Karl-Eduard von Schnitzler himself had the most controversial scene cut, the film could be broadcast on television and triggered a lively discussion about the practical value of art.

The director describes the everyday life of a little boy who, as a "latchkey kid," has to spend the afternoon alone until his father finally comes home in the evening. The mother, for whom the boy makes a letter the following day, seems to have left the family.

Documentary about the Potsdam landscape painter and art teacher Hubert Globisch.

The film revolves around two characters: a high school student who is intelligent, beautiful, and fulfills all the expectations placed on her by her school, her parents, and society—and a young unskilled worker, a loser, whom she is supposed to take care of and reform. Such sponsorships were commonplace in the GDR and form the basis for a multi-layered, ironic, and profoundly told encounter that deals with conformity and rebellion, social background, and outsiders.

A little everyday story about a man, his wife, her father, an old friend, and a few scenes from the unspectacular lives of ordinary people. Shot in a Berlin apartment with its authentic interior, the cinematic chamber play comically tells the story of the end of a marriage.

Student film about hiding Jews during the Second World War.

Red Berlin from the 1910s to the resistance against National Socialism comes to life as a proletarian family history. The siblings of Ernst Knaack, a communist who was executed in 1944, talk about their childhood and youth, which they spent with their grandparents. Their grandfather, a former sailor who took part in the November Revolution and was a member of the Workers' and Soldiers' Council, ran the Zum Kuli pub in Prenzlauer Berg—a workers' pub that was also frequented by the unemployed and homeless, where party meetings were held and leading KPD members such as August Bebel and Hermann Duncker were regulars.

Documentary short about Husemannstraße in Berlin's Prenzlauer Berg.

17-year-old Ramona comes from a home in Berlin to a small village and introduces herself as the baker's daughter. Neither of them knew anything about each other. Laconic images of the dreariness of the East German provinces show the excessive demands on the long-married baker and the mutual speechlessness of daughter and father.

Student film depicting recess at a grade school.

A chronicle of the events in Dresden in the fall of 1989, which began on October 4 with the passage of refugee trains from Prague and the associated riots. Among many others, a doctor who describes the injuries of police officers and demonstrators, young demonstrators who were arrested and a couple whose son disappeared have their say.

It’s only after the separation from her husband that another man tells her how valuable she is: the Chladek family, she’s a teacher, he’s a student. The first few years were nothing but quarrels: the Surau family, he’s a plumber, she’s a postal worker. Should she really intend to get further education at evening school, he won’t accept this: the Lehmann family, he’s a locksmith, she’s a lecturer. Three thirtysomething couples live in the Potsdam high-rise behind whose windows Petra Tschörtner looked for her graduation film. Long interviews that pierce the surface at once, equally revealing and oppressive. Promptly awarded a prize at the West German Short Film Festival in Oberhausen.