Movies: Defa Studio Fur Wochenschau Und Dokumentarfilme

A brief history of the emergence and artistic innovations of tango in 19th-century Argentina and Europe. The film offers a mosaic of tango melodies, art works, dance performances, historical footage, photographs of Buenos Aires at the turn of the 20t...

A woman born in 1949, the year the GDR was founded, talks about her life based on 35 images in her family album that each represent one year. This short was to premiere on the occasion of the 35th anniversary of East Germany. Officials rejected it, h...

A moving short portrait of Karl Marx’s family and their living conditions during their time in London....

In early summer 1989, Helke Misselwitz portrays young musicians in a band who produce their music on other people’s waste items. The four boys call themselves "Bulk Rubbish" and they drum out their resentment, having grown up on the new housing estat...

This first co-production between the GDR and Great Britain is intended to contribute to an understanding of the situation and attitudes of millions of working people in opposing social orders. Using the example of shipyard workers, fishermen, the bri...

Photographer Gundula Schulze wrote her graduate thesis on "nude photography of women in East Germany". It's a subject she continues to pursue in her photography. She considers the stereotype of superficial nude photography anachronistic, and talks vi...

Revolution and resignation within the changes at the end of the GDR....

Sitting at her typewriter, listening to tango music, she dreams. Buenos Aires and Montevideo are far away, a different world where, long ago, the tango came into being. A dream about dance and music, as well as about unfulfilled desire and wanderlust...

Das russische Wunder (The Russian Miracle) (1963) is a two-part East German documentary directed by Annelie and Andrew Thorndike. The documentary chronicles Russia’s dramatic transformation from the Tsarist Empire to the Soviet Union, covering key hi...

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Posing as West German journalists, East German documentary filmmakers Heynowski and Scheumann pay a visit to the notorious Nazi-turned-mercenary Siegfried “Kongo” Müller, pump him with booze, and get him to talk about his life and war campaigns in Af...

Documents important parts of the East German rock music scene of the late 1980s, from well-established bands like Silly, to underground rock bands like Feeling B. This road movie features young people using music to express their take on life, opposi...

Director Junge was commissioned by the GDR in the country for the first time in the summer of 1970; his film In Syria auf Montage accompanies German engineers who train workers in the Homs textile factory. Shortly after filming ended, Hafez al-Assad ...

A polemical report. "Way to the neighbors" is the motto of the Oberhausen Short Film Festival. In their "Remarks on the Oberhausen 66 Film Festival," the GDR documentarians Gerhard Scheumann and Walter Heynowski take the competition selection to task...

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Portrait of a private coal company in East Berlin's Prenzlauer Berg district in 1988/89. The feisty woman boss runs the business with humour and understanding. Her seven male employees respect her. To the outside world, they are all tough guys, but a...

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...

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 ...

Director Andreas Voigt interviewed people of different ages and social backgrounds about their experiences after the fall of the Berlin Wall. He paints an important picture of this historic period in German history, filled with radical social and eco...

An international anthology about the struggles of female workers around the world....