Der volkseigene Bürgermeister
A documentary on the late American entertainer Dean Reed, who became a huge star in East Germany after settling there in 1973.
Brüder Kühn: Zwei Musiker spielen sich frei
Journalist Daniela Dahn interviews the East-German author Christa Wolf during the German reunification: reflections on history, changing politics, life and work.
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.
The life story of Charlotte von Mahlsdorf, who survived the Nazi reign as a trans woman and helped start the German gay liberation movement. Documentary with some dramatized scenes. Two actors play the young and middle aged Charlotte and she plays herself in the later years.
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.
Short biographical documentary about the life of Alfred Florstedt and his life as a progressive communist from the Weimar Republic to his death in 1985.
Located in former West Berlin, Tempelhof Airport reflects the dramatic history of the 20th century. Once a Nazi showpiece, it later became a symbol of freedom during the Berlin Airlift and the Cold War. In 1978, East German citizen Constanze Glien unexpectedly arrived here after her flight was hijacked, changing the course of her life.
The free, almost naive view from the perspective of a child puts the "68ers" in a new, illuminating light in the anniversary year 2008. The film is a provocative reckoning with the ideological upbringing that seemed so progressive and yet was suffocated by the children's desire to finally grow up. With an ironic eye and a feuilletonistic style, author Richard David Precht and Cologne documentary film director André Schäfer trace a childhood in the West German provinces - and place the major events of those years in completely different, smaller and very private contexts.
The film accompanies Jenny Gröllmann, a German actress, during the last two years of her life.
"GDR The uprising of June 17, 1953" - : Since its founding, the German Democratic Republic (GDR) has repeatedly struggled with domestic political problems. While the standard of living of the population in the western part of Germany steadily increased, it stagnated in the GDR . A one-sided, industry-oriented reconstruction policy, coupled with rapid militarization, weighed on the country's economy, which was already under pressure from Soviet reparations demands. A majority of the population did not identify with the socialist system, which accordingly stood on shaky ground.
Erich Honecker ruled the GDR for 18 years. His fall in 1989 heralded the downfall of the state that had called itself "the better Germany" for 40 years. Nazi victim and autocrat, bourgeois and power-conscious: Honecker was an ideological hardliner who coordinated the construction of the Wall in 1961 and whose regime was known as an unjust state for Wall deaths, firing orders, the Stasi and forced adoptions. In the wake of the fall of communism, the former model socialist fell into homelessness and found himself on the run in his own country. Suffering from cancer, he managed to evade responsibility before a court by emigrating to Chile, where he died in 1994. This gripping documentary portrays the rise and fall of this contradictory German politician with an impressive array of top-class international and national contemporary witnesses. Erich Honecker would have been 100 years old on August 25, 2012.
Warren Buffett and Bill Gates launched an unusual campaign in June 2010: both agreed to donate half of their fortunes to charity. The filmmakers followed multi-billionaire Warren Buffett for 18 months, investigating his motives and talking to supporters and opponents of his initiative.
Schabowskis Zettel - Die Nacht, als die Mauer fiel
In the documentary Last To Know political prisoners, sent to jail for openly opposing the East German regime that existed until the German reunification in 1990, talk about their times of trial and their lives today. Neither they, nor their families have come to terms with what happened.
A retrospective look at the youth cultures born in the German Democratic Republic. A celebration of the lust for life, a contemporary trip into the world of skate, a tale on three heroes and their boards, from their childhood in the seventies, through their teenage rebellion in the eighties and the summer of 1989, when their life changed forever, to 2011.
DDR - die entsorgte Republik
Sportsfreund Lötzsch
Was my father really a spy, as his file in the former East German Secret Service (STASI) suggests? This question marks the starting point of a son’s journey into his late father’s past which still remains somewhat mysterious even today. Eric Asch is looking for answers – in the Stasi archives, at the NSA and in his own family history. The result is a very personal documentary which reports ironically about the practices of secret service during the Cold War.