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.
Filmed in Berlin, July 1990. Images of workers taking down the wall and street peddlers selling pieces of it to make a living.
Documentary examines the history and evolution of the Olympic Games, taking a close look at the Olympic charter, oath and ideals. Also featured are rare home movies and interviews with Olympic athletes and the oldest known color footage of the Olympic Games from Berlin in 1936.
Documentary short about the rebuilding of Berlin in 1946 from a Soviet perspective, showcasing the social changes that have taken place since the fall of Hitler and of Jews working side-by-side with non-Jewish counterparts.
The crowd is the focus of this documentary, which presents historical scenes of the Brazilian Championship. Irreverent and poetic, the movie pays homage to the spectacle provided by football.
A film about three teenagers - Klara, Mina and Tanutscha - from the Berlin district of Kreuzberg. The trio have known each other since Kindergarten and have plenty in common. The three 15-year-olds are the best of friends; they are spending the summer at Prinzenbad, a large open-air swimming pool at the heart of the district where they live. They're feeling pretty grown up, and are convinced they've now left their childhood behind.
For the first time in six years, Barbara Morgenstern, pioneer of German-style electronic intimate pop, works on a new album. Her laptop sits on a shoebox, in the privacy of her home she finds first lines and harmonies: “I like to be alone,” one song begins. One by one, musicians join her. Intuitive ideas take shape. A window has opened. Arrangements, rehearsals, recordings follow. Step by step, the music enters public space, images are produced, videos, narratives. Questions arise: New beginning or back to the roots? New Biedermeier or tough political comment? The bigger the band, the riskier the booking. The more crisis-ridden the environment, the more comforting the music-making.
The documentary Intersection presents the everyday life of Eduard Bigas, in his current residence in Berlin. The audiovisual piece goes into Bigas' way of looking, while he himself tells his story. And through the interviews with his closest circle, both the social and the professional one, it seeks to expose the way of doing things of this artist with surrealist roots.
Two queer Brazilians go skinny dipping in a lake where they talk about love, sex, colonialism and migration, on a pandemic summer afternoon in Berlin.
The film chronicles the story of how the Nazis and the IOC turned, to their mutual benefit, a small sports event into the modern Olympics. The grand themes and controversial issues from the 1936 Games have continued to this day: Monumentality, budget overruns, collusion with authoritarian regimes, corruption and sometimes even bribery.
1989, les trains de la liberté
Former "Titanic" satire magazine editor Martin Sonneborn takes an undercover trip around Berlin and discovers the East-German mentality and what is left of the socialist German Democratic Republic.
Lebensdaten
24 hours at the Berlin traffic accident standby service. The frequency of accidents on the streets of the capital of the German Democratic Republic (GDR) becomes apparent, including inappropriate and increased speed, pedestrian errors, failure to give way and driving under the influence of alcohol. Major Busse, the head of the Berlin Traffic Accident Investigation Unit, raises the question of whether the GDR has developed its own kind of driving. The camera provides interesting insights into the carelessness and aggressiveness of road users, which can lead to serious injuries and deaths
Journey with the musicians of the Berlin Philharmonic and their conductor Sir Simon Rattle on a breakneck concert tour of six metropolises across Asia: Beijing, Seoul, Shanghai, Hong Kong, Taipei and Tokyo. Their artistic triumph onstage belies a dynamic and dramatic life backstage. The orchestra is a closed society that observes its own laws and traditions, and in the words of one of its musicians is, “an island, a democratic microcosm – almost without precedent in the music world - whose social structure and cohesion is not only founded on a common love for music but also informed by competition, compulsion and the pressure to perform to a high pitch of excellence... .” Never before has the Berlin Philharmonic allowed such intimate and exclusive access into its private world.
At the 2016 European Championships, violent clashes between Russian and English supporters in Marseille put the spotlight on Russian hooliganism. Russian hooligans injured over 100 English supporters, beating two into a coma, and it raised serious concerns ahead of Russia hosting the 2018 World Cup. Filmmaker Alex Stockley von Statzer travels to Russia to experience the country's football fan culture first hand. Featuring footage filmed in Marseille in 2016, rare interviews with members of some of the most feared firms like the Spartak Gladiators and Orel Butchers, and new footage of an organised fight for wannabe recruits, this show uncovers a world where brutal violence has become a mark of honour and a symbol of newly resurgent Russian masculinity.
Documentary about the life in Berlin in 1941. The planned premier was stopped by the national party due to the damages and painful changes to the city that soon followed. It thus premiered in 1950.
Documentation on the Berlin S-Bahn, which threatened to fall into oblivion as a result of the division of the city.
Berlin Geheimoperation Tunnel
This documentary explores the creation of the Holocaust Memorial in Berlin as designed by architect Peter Eisenman. Reaction of the German public to the completed memorial is also shown.