Film Archive

Land (Film Archive)

Matinee Saxon State Archive 2022
Filmstill [An Interview with Ingeborg Tölke]
[An Interview with Ingeborg Tölke]
The self-taught nature filmmaker Ingeborg Tölke inspired broad audiences with her technical skills and her lifelong connection to flora and fauna.
Filmstill [An Interview with Ingeborg Tölke]

[An Interview with Ingeborg Tölke]

[Interview mit Ingeborg Tölke]
Matinee Sächsisches Staatsarchiv 2022
Documentary Film
GDR
1963
7 minutes
German
Subtitles: 
None

Ingeborg Tölke recaps her filmic biography, explains its elaborate technical conditions and talks about future core themes. She was presumably responsible for several short intermission films for Deutscher Fernsehfunk as well as a commissioned educational film. Until old age, she explored the possibilities of macro shots and time-lapse technology, which became her trademark.

Konstantin Wiesinger

Credits DOK Leipzig Logo

Producer
Deutscher Fernsehfunk (DFF)
Matinee Saxon State Archive 2022
Filmstill Familie Butter
The Butter Family
An entertaining vision for International Women’s Day as an admonition, inspiration and commentary about gender relations in GDR everyday life, in the form of a puppet animation.
Filmstill Familie Butter

The Butter Family

Familie Butter
Matinee Sächsisches Staatsarchiv 2022
Documentary Film
GDR
1967
6 minutes
German
Subtitles: 
None

The married couple Angelika and Horst Butter sum up successes and setbacks of their joint amateur filmmaking. They now produce elaborate puppet animations in their private rooms, under sometimes adverse conditions. They adapt fairy tale and fantasy sources, but also take up topical social issues, for example in an entertaining vision for International Women’s Day.

Konstantin Wiesinger

Credits DOK Leipzig Logo

Producer
Deutscher Fernsehfunk (DFF)
Matinee Saxon State Archive 2022
Filmstill Frauen unserer Zeit
Women of Our Time
Hanna Emuth
According to the film’s voice-over, it is the duty of a factory’s women’s committee to “exert a constant influence on systematic ideological-political and technical qualification”.
Filmstill Frauen unserer Zeit

Women of Our Time

Frauen unserer Zeit
Hanna Emuth
Matinee Sächsisches Staatsarchiv 2022
Documentary Film
GDR
1969
15 minutes
German
Subtitles: 
None

The women’s committees in the GDR factories promote the technical and ideological-political qualification of female staff members. However, the film identifies deficits in the women’s private environment, since the men by their side often support their professional development only to a limited extent and the women’s multiple responsibilities persist despite state support.

Konstantin Wiesinger

Credits DOK Leipzig Logo

Director
Hanna Emuth
Script
Günther Mehnert
Cinematographer
Wolfgang Niestradt
Editor
Hanna Kubin
Producer
DEFA-Studio für Kurzfilme
Score
Peter Gotthardt
Matinee Saxon State Archive 2022
Filmstill Hilfe, ich bin eine Frau
Help, I’m a Woman!
Edith Schneider, Joachim Schneider
Mother, working woman, housewife and wife all in one: A tightly scheduled everyday life seems to leave next to no space for developing one’s personality beyond these roles.
Filmstill Hilfe, ich bin eine Frau

Help, I’m a Woman!

Hilfe, ich bin eine Frau!
Edith Schneider, Joachim Schneider
Matinee Sächsisches Staatsarchiv 2022
Fictional Film
GDR
1981
10 minutes
German
Subtitles: 
None

A creative and skilful montage as well as dramatically spot-on sound and music effects are combined in a snappy plot to offer a mordant commentary on the constitutionally enshrined equality of men and women in the GDR. The film was awarded a medal at the 1982 congress of UNICA, the Union Internationale du Cinéma, in Aachen.

Konstantin Wiesinger

Credits DOK Leipzig Logo

Director
Edith Schneider, Joachim Schneider
Producer
Betriebsfilmstudio Filmstudio VEB Bohrungen und Schachtbau Welzow
Matinee Saxon State Archive 2022
Filmstill Lebendes Moor
Living Moor
Ingeborg Tölke
Technically elaborate and sensitively composed, the self-taught nature filmmaker Ingeborg Tölke unlocks fantastic and cruel aspects of the natural landscape of a moor.
Filmstill Lebendes Moor

Living Moor

Lebendes Moor
Ingeborg Tölke
Matinee Sächsisches Staatsarchiv 2022
Documentary Film
GDR
1962
11 minutes
German
Subtitles: 
None

The self-taught nature filmmaker Ingeborg Tölke uses quotes from literary encounters with the flora and fauna of the moor in a gentle approach to this landscape. With great empathy, she uncovers the often all-too-hastily overlooked beauties and cruelties of the place, using time-lapse and macro techniques. Her debut work, which was also amazing in terms of film craft, won several awards.

Konstantin Wiesinger

Credits DOK Leipzig Logo

Director
Ingeborg Tölke
Matinee Saxon State Archive 2022
Filmstill Tagebuch eines Schmalfilmers
Diary of a Narrow-Gauge Filmmaker
The experienced amateur filmmaker Liselotte Schließer looks back on her career and wonders at the low number of female directors and camera people.
Filmstill Tagebuch eines Schmalfilmers

Diary of a Narrow-Gauge Filmmaker

Tagebuch eines Schmalfilmers
Matinee Sächsisches Staatsarchiv 2022
Documentary Film
GDR
1975
10 minutes
German
Subtitles: 
None

Accompanying Liselotte Schließer, who worked full time as a technical draughtswoman, in her private and professional daily life. She talks about the passion that became her second mission in life. The only woman in organised amateur filmmaking for many years and now head of the amateur filmmakers’ association of Radebeul, she still misses female directors and camera people.

Konstantin Wiesinger

Credits DOK Leipzig Logo

Producer
Deutscher Fernsehfunk (DFF)
Matinee Saxon State Archive 2022
Filmstill Wir und unsere Umwelt
We and Our Environment
Hanna Emuth
Environmental protection was firmly anchored in the legislation of the industrial state of the GDR. The tension between exploitation and preservation of nature, however, seemed unresolvable.
Filmstill Wir und unsere Umwelt

We and Our Environment

Wir und unsere Umwelt
Hanna Emuth
Matinee Sächsisches Staatsarchiv 2022
Documentary Film
GDR
1971
27 minutes
German
Subtitles: 
None

On the occasion of the GDR Landeskulturgesetz (Law on the Conservation and Protection of the Environment), passed in 1970, the speaker explains the various aspects of environmental protection through vivid, visually pointed examples. The film repeatedly refers to the fundamental contradiction between exploitation and preservation of nature in a developed industrial state but is unable to resolve it.

Konstantin Wiesinger

Credits DOK Leipzig Logo

Director
Hanna Emuth
Script
Jürgen Hartmann, Herbert Mosch
Cinematographer
Manfred Heim
Editor
Monika Schäfer
Producer
DEFA-Studio für Kurzfilme
Score
Wolfgang Pietsch
Matinee Saxon State Archive 2022
Filmstill Wirbel um Arkadi
Turmoil Around Arkady
Liselotte Schließer
A Soviet dance instructor is expected to ensure the authenticity of the choreography of a children’s and youth dance ensemble’s Eastern European and Central Asian folk dances.
Filmstill Wirbel um Arkadi

Turmoil Around Arkady

Wirbel um Arkadi
Liselotte Schließer
Matinee Sächsisches Staatsarchiv 2022
Documentary Film
GDR
1967
11 minutes
German
Subtitles: 
None

With no introduction, the audience find themselves in the middle of the film’s subject. Soviet ballet master Arkady Sakharov instructs the children’s and youth dance ensemble of the Radebeul district’s arts centre with an insistent voice. Belarussian, Ukrainian, Uzbek and Russian folk dances are rehearsed under his strict guidance and performed at the packed local arts centre.

Konstantin Wiesinger

Credits DOK Leipzig Logo

Director
Liselotte Schließer
Cinematographer
Liselotte Schließer