Film Archive

Jahr

Sections (Film Archive)

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
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 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 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
Retrospective 2024
Filmstill Report
Report
Volker “Via” Lewandowsky
A collage about the lascivious inertia of power, full of allusions to the rotting Roman Empire. In 1987, the decay of the world-organising systems could already be smelled from the GDR underground.
Filmstill Report

Report

Report
Volker “Via” Lewandowsky
Retrospective 2024
Experimental Film
GDR
1987
7 minutes
without dialogue
Subtitles: 
None

The GDR formed an image of its citizens, hardy in everyday life and firm in principles, that it wished to see reflected in “their” art. Dresden-based artist Volker, called Via Lewandowsky, avoided the vanity of the GDR art scene and reflected something else back to his superior state: the indolence of the flesh, the gluttony of the systems that allegedly ordered the world. This Super 8 film from the late German Democratic subculture rubs against Heiner Müller’s stage text “Anatomy Titus Fall of Rome A Shakespeare Commentary”. The manuscript was (half) published in 1986 by the East Berlin Henschelverlag with the following proviso: “If the play is not accepted for production, this book must be returned immediately […].” Lewandowsky emigrated to West Berlin in 1989 before the fall of the Wall.

Sylvia Görke

Credits DOK Leipzig Logo

Director
Volker “Via” Lewandowsky
Retrospective 2024
Filmstill Staßfurt – Windhoek
Staßfurt – Windhoek
Lilly Grote, Julia Kunert
In August 1990, the still-GDR sends 425 Namibian refugee children back to their liberated “homeland”. Suddenly, after eleven years of hospitality, things had to move quickly. Beginnings and departures coincide.
Filmstill Staßfurt – Windhoek

Staßfurt – Windhoek

Staßfurt – Windhoek
Lilly Grote, Julia Kunert
Retrospective 2024
Documentary Film
GDR
1990
52 minutes
German
Subtitles: 
None

History in a hurry: Namibia becomes independent in March 1990, in July the Publicly Owned Enterprise DEFA becomes a GmbH, in October GDR becomes FRG East, in August a West and an East German filmmaker record one of the last GDR inconsistencies for DEFA. The state in pre-retirement sends 425 Namibian children, whom it had rescued from Angolan camps eleven years earlier, “home.” Hastily. But why? When Grote, Kunert and the children arrive, a Namibian minister explains that the East German supporters of these colonial war victims are now out of power. The new powers had no interest … In the Leipzig festival selection in 1990, and again in 1991, this film about German-Namibian foreignness and alienation cannot be found. The Retrospective 2024 makes up for this strange omission.

Sylvia Görke

Credits DOK Leipzig Logo

Director
Lilly Grote, Julia Kunert
Script
Lilly Grote, Julia Kunert
Cinematographer
Lilly Grote, Julia Kunert
Editor
Ingeborg Marszalek
Producer
DEFA-Studio für Dokumentarfilme GmbH
Sound
Lilly Grote, Julia Kunert