Comrade Couture

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.

2009-02-07 | de

The Ministry for State Security - Everyday life at a public authority

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.

2002-10-16 | de

Berlin Hauptbahnhof

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

1988-01-01 | de

The 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.

1990-10-05 | de

Drawing the Line: A Portrait of Keith Haring

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.

1989-11-01 | en

Solidarność: How Solidarity Changed Europe

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.

2019-10-01 | de

Destruction of the Berlin Wall

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

2014-11-09 | en

Tunnel to Freedom

13 August 1961: the GDR closes the sector borders in Berlin. The city is divided overnight. Escape to the West becomes more dangerous every day. But on September 14, 1962, exactly one year, one month and one day after the Wall was built, a group of 29 people from the GDR managed to escape spectacularly through a 135-meter tunnel to the West. For more than 4 months, students from West Berlin, including 2 Italians, dug this tunnel. When the tunnel builders ran out of money after only a few meters of digging, they came up with the idea of marketing the escape tunnel. They sell the film rights to the story exclusively to NBC, an American television station.

2021-07-22 | de

Grenze

In February 1986 they received the call of a fatherland that no longer exists: four young GDR citizens on the verge of adulthood see themselves forced, like so many others in East and West Germany, to do their one and a half years of military service. What is special: Their service area is the border system, an anti-imperialist protective wall according to their superiors, death strips and prison bars for a population incapacitated in naked reality. Now, seventeen years later, there is a reunion with the comrades and the old post. This feature film, which was the first in reunified Germany to deal with the inner workings of the GDR border troops, tells of life on the fence, the associated contradictions and some hot phases in the Cold War.

2004-08-03 | de

Hasselhoff vs. The Berlin Wall

David Hasselhoff, better known for his roles in “Knight Rider” and “Baywatch” released a song titled, “Looking for Freedom” the year before the Berlin Wall came down. He performed it on top of the Berlin Wall to a million people during the biggest New Year's Eve party Germany had ever seen. Twenty five years later, David revisits the now-reunited capital, investigating what is left of the Wall, and explores what it meant in the context of the Cold War dividing Communism in the East from democracy in the West. Along his journey he meets extraordinary people who dreamt of freedom and risked their lives trying to overcome the dreaded Berlin Wall.

2014-09-01 | en

Rise and Fall of the Berlin Wall

In August 1961, a few railway cars and barbed wire divided East Germany from West. It was a barrier that would be extended and become increasingly more sophisticated, a technological counter to each escape attempt. Computer imagery reconstructs how the Berlin Wall grew from a meager obstacle to a 97 mile barrier of concrete slabs, watchtowers and guards.

2009-11-19 | en

DDR - die entsorgte Republik

2019-10-02 | de

Rabbit à la Berlin

The untold story about wild rabbits which lived between the Berlin Walls. For 28 years Death Zone was their safest home. Full of grass, no predators, guards protecting them from human disturbance. They were closed but happy. When their population grew up to thousands, guards started to remove them. But rabbits survived and stayed there. Unfortunately one day the wall fell down. Rabbits had to abandon comfortable system. They moved to West Berlin and have been living there in a few colonies since then. They are still learning how to live in the free world, same as we - the citizens of Eastern Europe.

2009-04-29 | pl

Erich Mielke - Master of Fear

Docudrama about life, career and breakdown of Erich Mielke, the former Security chief of East Germany.

2015-11-05 | de

Efter Muren - mellan taggtråd och kaos

On 3 October 1990 DDR stopped existing as a state and became the Federal Republic of Germany. The past had been overturned. The new had not yet taken shape. The rejoicing over the fall of the Berlin wall. The bitterness and shame when the doors opened to cabinet of horrors at Stasi. Uncertainty and worry about the future. Everyone's battle against everyone for survival. In the form of a travelogue, freelancing journalist Rainer Hartleb depicts all the mixed feelings that flow from the country that no longer exists.

1990-10-02 | sv

This Ain't California

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.

2012-08-15 | de

CIA vs KGB: Battleground Berlin

For 50 years, Berlin was the symbol of the Cold War. The city at the heart of the intelligence war between the US and the Soviet bloc. Thousands of KGB or CIA, agents observed each other, cogs in the biggest information war in history.

2016-04-14 | fr

Something to Do with the Wall

In 1986, Ross McElwee (Sherman's March) and Marilyn Levine were making a film about the 25th anniversary of the Berlin Wall, when the imposing structure was still very much intact as the world’s most visible symbol of hardline Communism and Cold War lore. They thought they were making a documentary on the community of tourists, soldiers, and West Berliners who lived in the seemingly eternal presence of the graffiti emblazoned eyesore. But in 1989, as the original film neared completion, the Wall came down, and McElwee and Levine returned to Berlin, this time to capture the radically different atmosphere of the reunified city.

1991-04-03 | en

Feuerland

Volker Koepp documents life in the Dorotheenstadt in Berlin-Mitte, which was called "Feuerland" in the 19th century.

1988-01-15 | de

Dusk: 1950s East Berlin Bohemia

A documentary and film essay about the artist scene in East Berlin during the 1950s.

1993-12-15 | de