At the turn of 1961/62, Agnès Varda travelled to Cuba and saw a country that integrated Marx and Lenin into the everyday life of the Caribbean. Cha-cha-cha was part of it, but also cars à l’américaine. At her Parisian animation stand, Varda animated the black and white photos she had brought back home in an almost jaunty photo film. Chris Marker, her close friend from the Rive Gauche circle of the French Nouvelle Vague, had just paved the way for this cinematic form. They also shared an enthusiasm for the Cuban Revolution – and finally even a bit of Leipzig festival experience: In 1964, Varda’s moving photo montage won the Silver Dove. Despite or because of the subtle irony with which she looks at this somewhat improvised socialism?

In works like “Guide Dog Ruepel” (1962), Bärbl Bergmann was the first feature film director in the GDR to portray children in their often pitiless but also honest dealings with each other, something that was almost impossible in the documentary films of that period. But she also managed to sneak lessons on how to pursue educational goals with creative obstinacy into popular science films. Thus her educational piece about two boys who discover that magic, too, requires hard work, despite its rational approach, is far from disenchanting: The protagonists reach their conclusion via detours that take them through mysterious corridors, furtive looks through keyholes and bewitching dreams.

Sibylle Schönemann’s film about abortion lets young and older women speak; women who were forced to abort by their partners or who chose to carry the baby to term despite predicted difficulties. Assembled as a kind of collage, a round table alternates with stylised passages, while the camera also shows moments in a clinic right before and after the procedure. The attitude vacillates between drama and affirmation of life. Liberal perspectives, with one exception, are left out. Schönemann, together with Tamara Trampe, almost managed to take up the complex issue in a feature film.

A look back on Hungarian history ends in the bloody present of October 1956: The suppression of the uprising in Budapest, filmed from the point of view of those affected. The material was smuggled abroad and assembled there by refugee filmmakers. A direct contemporary document which at the end reflects the powerlessness of the West: Nobody came to help.