Generation '89 - Growing up in the year of change

A documentary focusing on the rebuilding projects in Berlin after the fall of the Berlin Wall.

In 1988, Tilda Swinton toured round the Berlin Wall on a bicycle - starting and ending at the Brandenburg Gate - accompanied by filmmaker Cynthia Beatt. As Swinton travels through fields and historic neighborhoods, past lakes and massive concrete apartment buildings, the Wall is a constant presence.

This film undertakes a journey into the amazing parallel universe of East Berlin’s fashion designers and experts in the art of survival. For, in the midst of the constraints of life in the GDR, there existed a fantasy world where it was possible to dance to another tune, be individual and even provocative. The most important characteristic of this bohemian scene was one’s per- sonal style. But this certainly wasn’t something that could be bought off the peg in the GDR. In this parallel universe it was up to you to create your own individual image – with your own hands. This film tells the story of the desires, the passion and the dreams that were tried and tested, lived and performed in the shadow of the Berlin Wall.

A documentary about the deconstruction of the Berlin Wall which makes no use of vocal commentary but instead focuses on visual elements. From the Potsdamer Platz to the Brandenburg Gate, the camera captures the historic events from all sides and different angles: on the one hand there are news reporters and tourists from all over the world taking pictures, children selling pieces of the wall to passers-by, and people celebrating New Year's Eve, on the other we see abandoned subway stations and officials with blank looks on their faces.

Documentary (in colour) about the first youth meeting (Deutschlandtreffen der Jugend) in East Berlin in 1950.

Some months after the fall of the Berlin wall, during the time of federal elections in Germany in 1990, Chris Marker shot this passionate documentary, reflecting the state of the place and its spirit with remarkable acuity.

Short documentary about artist Keith Haring, detailing his involvement in the New York City graffiti subculture, his opening of the Pop Shop, and the social commentary present in his paintings and drawings.

A documentary exploring the aftermath of the Berlin Wall's fall, the film features interviews in English and German with long-time residents and foreign visitors/residents from both sides of the former divide.

Filmed in Berlin, July 1990. Images of workers taking down the wall and street peddlers selling pieces of it to make a living.

Former heads, senior officers and the rector of the MfS law school explain how the ministry functioned. The interviewees see themselves as legitimate actors with a clear mandate and political enemy image. They provide an insight into the techniques and routines of secret service work, psychological tricks during interrogations and the management of “unofficial collaborators”. What they all have in common is that they are not aware of any moral guilt. The directors contrast their footage of prisons and archives with the statements of former Stasi employees in an attempt to expose their evasions and efforts at suppression.

Gdańsk, Poland, September 1980. Lech Wałęsa and other Lenin shipyard workers found Solidarność (Solidarity), the first independent trade union behind the Iron Curtain. The long and hard battle to bring down communist dictatorship has begun.

Rock and roll's part in bringing down the Berlin Wall and smashing the Iron Curtain is told from the perspective of rockers who played at the time, on both sides of the Wall, and from survivors of the communist regimes who recall the lifeline that rock music provided them.

Drei Frauen

“Liberty Train – Bürger’s Long Journey” sheds light on the events of the PEACEFUL REVOLUTION of 1989 from different perspectives. It centres on the eyewitnesses who, together with thousands of other people who had fled East Germany, were in the garden of the West German Embassy in Prague on the evening of the 30 September 1989.

Documents the remodeling of the Ostbahnhof in Berlin Friedrichshain into the central station of the GDR.

Documents the work of youth work action on construction sites in East Berlin.

Children's film with animation and live action elements about how the lock in the Spree River works.

Ten years after breaking off the film "Anka and ..." nearly all the protagonists of that time have disappeared. Mario and Tilo hung themselves in the final phase of the GDR, Frank is surviving in West Berlin addicted to drugs, and Karsten is doing pretty well there. Anka, however, who once was in love with each of them, lives alone with her danghter in Eisenhüttenstadt. A film about normality in life.

DDR - die entsorgte Republik

Marcel Ophüls interviews various important Eastern European figures for their thoughts on the reunification of Germany and the fall of Communism.