DEFA Studio für Dokumentarfilme

1991, 13 min
by Eduard Schreiber

A doomsday mood wafts over a garbage dump near East Berlin. Crows and seagulls circle above it while below, a heavy machine trundles over a photograph of Mikhail Gorbachev. Not far from the flag of East Germany, a brochure offers information “about the beginnings of our state” and another on “the economy and national defence”. Mixed among the physical remnants of a defunct state are private artefacts of its citizens – letters, photos, questionnaires rustling gently

Germany 1991, 91 min
by Wolfgang Kissel, C. Cay Wesnigk

This eye-opening film tells the history of the German Democratic Republic through East Germany's official newsreels and state films. Compared to Leni Riefenstahl, the East German propaganda machine was comically stiff and inept. But filmmakers Kissel and Wesnigk have excavated the archives of the East German state film studio to discover priceless archival footage that compares to THE ATOMIC CAFE: Walter Ulbricht playing ping pong, the East German version of "Sesame Street," Erich and Margot Hon