Film Archive

Matinee Saxon State Archive 2021
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… Do Not Forget Us! [excerpt]
Michael Wünsch, Christine Beer
At the district level, the SED’s legitimization and claim to moral leadership are brought into a line of tradition with the illegal KPD resistance in the Weimar Republic.
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… Do Not Forget Us! [excerpt]

… vergeßt uns nicht! [Ausschnitt]
Michael Wünsch, Christine Beer
Matinee Saxon State Archive 2021
Documentary Film
GDR
1984
15 minutes
German
Subtitles: 
None

A film is ceremonially screened on the 40th anniversary of the murder of the resistance group around KPD (Communist Party of Germany) functionary Georg Schuman. Present is Horst Schumann, son of the resistance fighter and 1st Secretary of the SED Leipzig District Authority. The filmed document and the documented screening become propaganda accomplices: The GDR present perpetuates the history of NS resistance.

Konstantin Wiesinger

Credits DOK Leipzig Logo

Director
Michael Wünsch, Christine Beer
Script
Michael Wünsch, Christine Beer
Cinematographer
Maro Nagel, Thomas Huschlo, Bert Gahrmann, Thomas Voßbeck, Janek Ziegler, Hagen Reckziegel, Rainhardt Mißbach, Thomas Böttger
Editor
Christine Beer, Gabi Blumentritt
Producer
Filmstudio am Haus der Jungen Pioniere "Georg Schwarz", Leipzig
Sound
Thilo Kersten, Benedikt Rösel, Janek Ziegler
Retrospective 2024
Filmstill [Opening speech for the retrospective “Cuban Documentary Film”] [excerpt]
[Opening speech for the retrospective “Cuban Documentary Film”] [excerpt]
Santiago Álvarez
Cuban documentarist Santiago Álvarez speaks to GDR cultural officials and the “fighting” youth of Leipzig: about documentary film as a weapon against imperialism and colonialism.
Filmstill [Opening speech for the retrospective “Cuban Documentary Film”] [excerpt]

[Opening speech for the retrospective “Cuban Documentary Film”] [excerpt]

[Eröffnungsrede zur Retrospektive „Kubanischer Dokumentarfilm“] [Ausschnitt]
Santiago Álvarez
Retrospective 2024
Acoustical Film
GDR
1974
15 minutes
German,
Spanish
Subtitles: 
German (Overvoice)

In 1974, the GDR and the Leipzig festival celebrated the 25th anniversary of the Cuban Revolution with the “Cuban Documentary Film” retrospective. Santiago Álvarez, vigorous propagandist of documentary film as an art of war against imperialist cinema entertainment, spoke at soporific length at the opening.
One wonders whether, in addition to the invited officials, the “fighting” youth of Leipzig addressed by Álvarez were present at the event. The speech has survived only as an audio document, the images must be imagined. The recording was commissioned by the State Film Documentation, a government agency that was to preserve GDR reality for the future. In 1974, no one in the room could have imagined that this future would one day take place without the GDR.

Sylvia Görke

Credits DOK Leipzig Logo

Director
Santiago Álvarez
Producer
Staatliche Filmdokumentation
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)
Genius Loci 2020
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[Leipzig, Station Forecourt]
Stadtkabinett für Kulturarbeit Leipzig
The hectic atmosphere on the station forecourt hasn’t changed in all those years. Even in 1988, this inhospitable place was crossed at the quickest possible pace.
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[Leipzig, Station Forecourt]

[Leipzig, Bahnhofsvorplatz]
Stadtkabinett für Kulturarbeit Leipzig
Genius Loci 2020
Documentary Film
GDR
1988
3 minutes
without dialogue
Subtitles: 
None

Romantic train rides? Rapid cuts and pans show the profane, hectic everyday life of a big city that has no time for romance. The “last mile” to the place of actual departure is covered at a quick pace – by taxi, streetcar or bus. Serious, tired or withdrawn faces hurry to leave the inhospitable station forecourt behind.

Konstantin Wiesinger

Credits DOK Leipzig Logo

Director
Stadtkabinett für Kulturarbeit Leipzig
Producer
Stadtkabinett für Kulturarbeit Leipzig
Matinee Saxon State Archive 2024
Filmstill [Sierra Leone]
[Sierra Leone]
unknown
Young people from the GDR and Sierra Leone meet away from well-rehearsed gestures and diplomatic protocols. The guests preserve their independence in both senses of the word.
Filmstill [Sierra Leone]

[Sierra Leone]

[Sierra Leone]
unknown
Matinee Saxon State Archive 2024
Documentary Film
GDR
1968
10 minutes
without dialogue
Subtitles: 
None

A mysterious film reel from the “Regional Film Studio Leipzig” holdings: labelled “Sierra Leone”, passed down without sound. After some official speeches, an ensemble from Sierra Leone perform a danced symbolic fight for their GDR hosts. Later, local and international couples sway on the dance floor to live music – non-protocol encounters with independent guests, in both senses of the word.

Konstantin Wiesinger

Credits DOK Leipzig Logo

Director
unknown
Retrospective 2024
Filmstill 15.000 Volt
15.000 Volt
Karlheinz Mund
On the overhead wire 15,000 volts, underneath everyday working life on an electric locomotive. On the soundtrack a passenger who the GDR will throw overboard in 1976: Wolf Biermann.
Filmstill 15.000 Volt

15.000 Volt

15.000 Volt
Karlheinz Mund
Retrospective 2024
Documentary Film
GDR
1963
18 minutes
German
Subtitles: 
None

This graduation film by future DEFA documentarian Karlheinz Mund presents a piece of GDR working worlds in the best poetic and earthy Babelsberg school tradition: the everyday life of railway workers – with two women in the electric locomotive driver’s cab.
In 1963, Leipzig audiences were able to get to know Mund’s study in the festival’s university film presentation. At the end, the “Spring Song of the Railwaywoman” can be heard off-screen, sung by Wolf Biermann. The GDR still tolerated the rebellious tormentor. Those who heard him in this film at the time probably only found out later that the authorities had long had him in their sights. In 1963, East Berlin’s Humboldt University refused to grant him a degree in philosophy despite passing his exams. Listening to Biermann’s song today, the words become charged: spring storm, great rain, a land waiting …

Sylvia Görke

Credits DOK Leipzig Logo

Director
Karlheinz Mund
Cinematographer
Hans-Jürgen Reinecke, Gerhard Gläser, Werner Kohlert, Eberhard Teich-Grüber
Editor
Gisela Hoffmann
Producer
Roland Paul
Sound
Günter Grossmann
Score
Gerhard Rosenfeld
Narrator
Dorothea Richter
Retrospective 2022
Filmstill Ablinga
Ablinga
Dagnija Osite-Krüger
A Lithuanian village destroyed by the Wehrmacht is reborn as a forest of sculptures. This film poem commemorates the murdered ones and calls for peace.
Filmstill Ablinga

Ablinga

Ablinga
Dagnija Osite-Krüger
Retrospective 2022
Documentary Film
GDR
1977
13 minutes
German
Subtitles: 
None

Nothing is left of the Lithuanian village of Ablinga. Destroyed by Wehrmacht soldiers in 1941, a forest of sculptures was erected in 1972 to commemorate those who once lived here. Larger than life, the carved wooden monuments rise to the sky. In national poet Justinas Marcinkevičius’s poem they wake up again, share some last secrets and become connecting links on a timeline that knows violence and dreams of peace. Dagnija Osite-Krüger’s montage is bold, playful and sometimes brutal, her concern credible and strong. Within a few minutes, “Ablinga” puts a spell on us, becoming a monument to German guilt and the memory of the murdered ones.

Carolin Weidner

Credits DOK Leipzig Logo

Director
Dagnija Osite-Krüger
Script
Dagnija Osite-Krüger
Cinematographer
Leonid Krainenkow
Editor
Werner Wendt
Producer
DEFA-Studio für Dokumentarfilme
Sound Design
Peter Gotthardt
Retrospective 2024
Filmstill Aida
Aida
Marwan Salamah
Marwan Salamah was delegated by the Palestine Liberation Organization to study in Babelsberg. As a one-man team, he realised this portrait of a young educator in a PLO orphanage in Tunis.
Filmstill Aida

Aida

Aida
Marwan Salamah
Retrospective 2024
Documentary Film
GDR
1985
22 minutes
Arabic
Subtitles: 
German (Overvoice)

Words of the poet Mahmoud Darwish float through this film: “Tell me. Perhaps I will remember my home whose perfume is only on my lips.” A 17-year-old Palestinian introduces herself: Aida, the returning one. When her father was killed in battle, her mother was already dead, killed by a bomb. When she was eight, she was sent to a PLO orphanage in Beirut, then to an orphanage in Damascus, then to an orphanage in Tunis. Here she takes care of new orphans. The portrait of a girl expands: countless children who will forget their homeland and origin. There is nothing but war left in their drawings. The PLO had assigned its collaborator Marwan Salamah to study cinematography at Babelsberg. Here, he is also the director. In 1985, “Aida” won the Prize of the World Federation of Democratic Youth in Leipzig.

Sylvia Görke

Credits DOK Leipzig Logo

Director
Marwan Salamah
Script
Marwan Salamah, Elke Schieber
Editor
Karin Geiß
Producer
Hochschule für Film und Fernsehen der DDR
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)
Matinee Saxon State Archive 2021
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When the Anemones Bloomed
Kollektiv
A restrained and thoughtful look at the “Below Forest Death March” which leaves room for nuances: Concentration camp inmates leave carvings on the trees. The testimonies “grow over”.
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When the Anemones Bloomed

Als die Anemonen blühten
Kollektiv
Matinee Saxon State Archive 2021
Documentary Film
GDR
1983
7 minutes
German
Subtitles: 
None

A formally sophisticated and thoughtful film about the “Below Forest Death March” memorial site: In the late spring of 1945, this wooded area near Wittstock became an improvised temporary camp for inmates of the Sachsenhausen and Ravensbrück concentration camps. They eternalized themselves and their fate by carving on the trees. But what does “eternal” mean? The trees grow, change and renew their skin …

Konstantin Wiesinger

Credits DOK Leipzig Logo

Director
Kollektiv
Producer
Cine-Pentama-Studio "Hans Beimler" VEB Kombinat Lokomotivbau-Elektrotechnische-Werke Hennigsdorf
Matinee Saxon State Archive 2023
Filmstill Encounters
Encounters
Alfred Dorn
Lenin’s long shadow reaches until 1970: The citizens of the Soviet Union pay their respects to Lenin, the founder of their state – at the mausoleum on Moscow’s Red Square.
Filmstill Encounters

Encounters

Begegnungen
Alfred Dorn
Matinee Saxon State Archive 2023
Documentary Film
GDR
1970
15 minutes
German
Subtitles: 
None

A quote by the Soviet futurist Vladimir Mayakovsky about Lenin frames the plot of this film: A dead man who is “more alive than the living” today. On a tour through the Union of Soviet Republics, the film team meet friends “in the full sense of the word” without mentioning their names: encounters with people in the Soviet Union in 1970.

Konstantin Wiesinger

Credits DOK Leipzig Logo

Director
Alfred Dorn
Producer
Filmkollektiv des VEB Chemiekombinat Bitterfeld
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 2024
Filmstill Chile
Chile
Juan Forch, Jörg Herrmann
Exiled Chilean Juan Forch and Dresden-based silhouette film specialist Jörg Herrmann call for battle against Pinochet and his imperialist allies: with singing and organ music.
Filmstill Chile
Filmstill Chile

Chile

Chile
Juan Forch, Jörg Herrmann
Retrospective 2024
Animated Film
GDR
1975
2 minutes
German,
Spanish
Subtitles: 
English

In 1973, General Pinochet, with the support of the US secret service, staged a coup against the democratically elected Marxist-Socialist President of Chile, Salvador Allende. Pinochet’s military junta murdered and tortured their way across the country. Juan Forch, Santiago-born journalist and filmmaker, managed to escape the terror via Mexico to the GDR and continued his opposition work from here until his return in 1979: as a director at the DEFA Studio for Animation Film in Dresden. With silhouette film specialist Jörg Herrmann he realised this animated agitation miniature, in which the dictator and his allies dance to the caustic artist’s tune – and to organ music.

Sylvia Görke

Credits DOK Leipzig Logo

Director
Juan Forch, Jörg Herrmann
Script
Juan Forch
Cinematographer
Peter Pohler
Editor
Heidrun Sünderhauf
Producer
DEFA-Studio für Trickfilme
Sound
Horst Philipp
Score
Addy Kurth
Animation
Juan Forch
Matinee Saxon State Archive 2021
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The Memorial
K. Kayser, B. Schmidt, K. Coccejus
Conveyed by innovative music and original sound bites, a disturbing dialogue between a memorial to National Socialist crimes and its viewers evolves.
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The Memorial

Das Mahnmal
K. Kayser, B. Schmidt, K. Coccejus
Matinee Saxon State Archive 2021
Documentary Film
GDR
1975
10 minutes
German
Subtitles: 
None

An innovative approach to the subject of National Socialism which uses a composition by Georg Katzer, a GDR pioneer of Neue Musik. The sound level – acoustic distortions and sound bites by leading representatives of the Third Reich – dominates, juxtaposed with minimalist images. A dialogue between viewers and memorial evolves in shots and counter shots.

Konstantin Wiesinger

Credits DOK Leipzig Logo

Director
K. Kayser, B. Schmidt, K. Coccejus
Producer
Amateurfilmstudio Fernsehsender Schwerin
Retrospective 2022
Filmstill The First Birthday
The First Birthday
Gabriele Hochneder
Silvia, single mother, celebrates her daughter’s first birthday. A matter-of-fact and occasionally sobering portrait that revolves around a sanguine woman.
Filmstill The First Birthday

The First Birthday

Der erste Geburtstag
Gabriele Hochneder
Retrospective 2022
Documentary Film
GDR
1978
17 minutes
German
Subtitles: 
None

Silvia Szuprizinski has lived alone with her little daughter for a year now: time to take stock. The young woman talks, her stories commented by Gabriele Hochneder’s pictures of everyday life that tell of efforts. Silvia, leaning against the tiled stove, talks about the failed relationship with the child’s father with detachment, but also with a certain degree of regret. At least her own family are present, all of them at the door in time for the first birthday. Still, Silvia spends her nights alone with herself – and the television. The fact that Hochneder’s film, despite the adversities, does not become a lament is at least partly owing to its sanguine main protagonist.

Carolin Weidner

Credits DOK Leipzig Logo

Director
Gabriele Hochneder
Cinematographer
Jürgen Lubosch
Editor
Ilona Thiel
Producer
Hochschule für Film und Fernsehen der DDR