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Retrospective 2021
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Operation J
Walter Heynowski
A polemical biographical research of Adenauer’s Chief of Staff of the Chancellery Globke: Nazi administrative lawyer, Eichmann confidant, accomplice to the racist declassification of Jews.
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Operation J

Aktion J
Walter Heynowski
Retrospective 2021
Documentary Film
GDR
1961
103 minutes
German
Subtitles: 
None

Heynowski’s biographical research in the guise of an exposé film was part of a campaign coordinated by SED functionary Albert Norden to unmask the FRG as a fascist state. Documents and commentaries trace the career of Adenauer’s Chief of Staff of the Chancellery, Hans Globke, who had collaborated in the systematic marking and racist declassification of Jews as a Nazi administrative lawyer and Eichmann confidant. The facts had been on the table for some time, but acquired new propaganda value in view of the impending Eichmann trial. In 1961, “Operation J” was awarded a main prize at the International Leipzig Documentary and Short Film Week.

Sylvia Görke

Credits DOK Leipzig Logo

Director
Walter Heynowski
Script
Walter Heynowski
Cinematographer
Rolf Sperling
Editor
Bert Schultz
Producer
Deutscher Fernsehfunk (DFF)
Retrospective 2021
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Berlin-Totale XIV. 2. d) Almstadtstraße
Karl-Heinz Wegner
A production of the State Film Documentation, which was set up to preserve uncensored GDR reality: Long-term residents look back on the German-Jewish history of “their” street.
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Berlin-Totale XIV. 2. d) Almstadtstraße

Berlin-Totale XIV. 2. d) Almstadtstraße
Karl-Heinz Wegner
Retrospective 2021
Documentary Film
GDR
1979
35 minutes
German
Subtitles: 
None

Why this film document about a street in East Berlin is the way it is, why it conveys an almost touching, basically unformed honesty and perplexity, is due to the specific institution it was made for. The State Film Documentation was founded to provide the GDR with uncensored testimonies of its own reality. Three long-time residents look, through notoriously draughty windows, at the notoriously chilly German-Jewish history: Herr Miegel, former pub owner, Frau Kramp, former cinema employee, Mischket Liebermann, writer and GDR cultural politician. They have been neighbours in their district forever. They will probably remain strangers to each other forever.

Sylvia Görke

Credits DOK Leipzig Logo

Director
Karl-Heinz Wegner
Cinematographer
Roland Worel, Dieter Schönberg
Sound
Dieter Harms
Commissioning Editor
Veronika Otten
Retrospective 2021
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Buchenwald
Günter Weschke
The Buchenwald Memorial was the first national memorial of the GDR. From 1961 to 1975, every memorial tour began with this introductory film, in which the Jewish victims are barely mentioned.
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Buchenwald

Buchenwald
Günter Weschke
Retrospective 2021
Documentary Film
GDR
1961
26 minutes
German
Subtitles: 
None

The inauguration of the “National Buchenwald Memorial”, the first national memorial of the GDR, took place in 1958. The monumental site was also meant to demonstrate the state-supporting importance of a selective culture of remembrance, commemorating the communist resistance fighters – and omitting the fact that the graves were mainly filled with Jewish victims. In 1961, DEFA completed this “introductory film”, commissioned by the Buchenwald committee, which talks about Goethe, Schiller, Thälmann, but only very marginally about Jews. Every visitor’s memorial tour started with this until 1975. Its scriptwriter and production manager was the playwright Heiner Müller, a fact that was not known until 2004.

Sylvia Görke

Credits DOK Leipzig Logo

Director
Günter Weschke
Script
Günter Weschke, Heiner Müller
Cinematographer
Günter Weschke
Producer
DEFA-Studio für Wochenschau und Dokumentarfilme
Sound
Heinz Reusch, Kurt Wolfram
Narrator
Sergio Günther, Ekkehard Schall, Wolfgang Heinz
Retrospective 2021
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The Stormers
Dagobert Loewenberg, Peter Voigt
An outraged film pamphlet takes the West German coverage of the Six-Day War as an occasion to launch a sweeping verbal blow against the Bonn Republic.
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The Stormers

Die Stürmer
Dagobert Loewenberg, Peter Voigt
Retrospective 2021
Documentary Film
GDR
1967
10 minutes
German
Subtitles: 
None

“If you want to storm, you use stormer methods”, to quote a direct reference to the infamous anti-Semitic smear sheet of the Nazi era. Set to shrill trumpet sounds, this outraged film pamphlet dissects, or so it seems, the drastic jargon of the “West German monopoly press”, especially the publications of the Springer publishing house, in their coverage of the Six-Day War between Israel and the Arab coalition of Egypt, Jordan and Syria. At the same time, it uses the reviled style for its own argumentation. Under the auspices of the DEFA newsreel editors of “Der Augenzeuge” (The Eyewitness), a sweeping blow against the Bonn Republic arises from news images and superimposed newspaper articles.

Sylvia Görke

Credits DOK Leipzig Logo

Director
Dagobert Loewenberg, Peter Voigt
Script
Dagobert Loewenberg
Cinematographer
Dieter Frycia
Producer
DEFA-Studio für Dokumentarfilme
Score
Kurt Zander
Retrospective 2021
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Memento
Karlheinz Mund
Jewish cemeteries in Berlin commemorate people and all the places where they were exterminated. Anti-Semitic desecrations of the graves in East Berlin were to be erased, too.
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Memento

Memento
Karlheinz Mund
Retrospective 2021
Documentary Film
GDR
1966
16 minutes
German
Subtitles: 
None

After studying at the German Academy of Film Art Potsdam-Babelsberg, Karlheinz Mund made this documentary tour of Jewish cemeteries in Berlin. The gravestones preserve the names of famous and unknown people. They preserve their places of death, where no distinction was made between the famous and the unknown: Auschwitz, Mauthausen. When the West German Short Film Festival invited Mund’s film, the committees in charge enforced one distinction after all: The images of graves defaced with anti-Semitic graffiti taken from the West German press were allowed to remain, footage of the same content filmed in East Berlin had to be removed for the theatrical release in the GDR.

Sylvia Görke

Credits DOK Leipzig Logo

Director
Karlheinz Mund
Script
Karlheinz Mund, Bodo Schulenburg
Cinematographer
Christian Lehmann, Werner Kohlert
Editor
Inge Dochow
Sound
Rolf Rolke, Otto Koch
Narrator
Hilmar Thate, Hans Hardt-Hardtloff