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The Free Orchestra. by Tschörtner, Petra,film director.; DEFA Film Library (Firm),dst; Kanopy (Firm),dst;
Originally produced by DEFA Film Library in 1989.Day in, day out, Barbara sells screws at a store in the East Berlin Market Hall. She is frustrated about having to tell her customers most of the time: “Ham wa nich!” (We don’t have that!) In the evening, she is the loud and wild singer of the legendary East Berlin avantgarde and punk band Das Freie Orchester. Playing music with her friends helps her escape the monotony of her job, convey feelings of unfulfillment with everyday life in East Germany in the 1980s, and dream of a different life. The short ends with a performance of the song “Ham Wa Nich!” at the famous Erich Franz Youth Club at Prenzlauer Berg.The music collective, Das Freie Orchester, was formed in 1984 and was part of an East German sub- and counterculture.Mode of access: World Wide Web.
Subjects: Documentary films.; Arts.; Social sciences.; Music.; History, Modern.; German language.; Foreign study.; Documentary films.; Artists.; History.;
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Drawing a Line. by Kroske, Gerd,film director.; DEFA Film Library (Firm),dst; Kanopy (Firm),dst;
Originally produced by DEFA Film Library in 2015.1986, West Berlin. Five resettled members of the Weimar underground punk scene in East Germany plan an exceptional art project that they call White Line. They will paint a white line that encircles the west side of the Berlin Wall as a political statement to the normalization of the existence of the Wall in the West. While the concrete Wall remained gray and austere on the east side, the west side had been colorfully painted by artists, turning it into a tourist attraction. The five artists believe that this obscures the meaning of the Wall as a deadly and dangerous border that divides a city and a country. The documentary tries to reconstruct this unusual art project that was interrupted by East German border guards who took one of the artists through an almost invisible Wall door to the East where he was imprisoned. The artists hadn’t considered that the actual border ran about 9-13 ft on East German territory, placing the “west side” of the Wall on GDR soil. But how did the East German guards know about their project? Almost three decades later, the artists find out that one of them was a state security informant.Mode of access: World Wide Web.
Subjects: Documentary films.; Art.; Arts.; Social sciences.; History, Modern.; German language.; Foreign study.; Documentary films.; Artists.; History.;
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Hotel Europa. by Schmidt, Thorsten,film director.; Sadler, Benjamin,actor.; Berlin, Jonathan,actor.; Schüttler, Katharina,actor.; Heesters, Nicole,actor.; Rénevier, Pauline,actor.; Beta Film (Firm),dst; Kanopy (Firm),dst;
Benjamin Sadler, Jonathan Berlin, Katharina Schüttler, Nicole Heesters, Pauline RénevierOriginally produced by Beta Film in 2022.HOTEL EUROPA (Das weiße Haus am Rhein) tells the story of young Emil Dreesen, who fights for the family hotel between the World Wars. As guests like Chaplin, Hitler, and Adenauer visit, deep family rifts emerge. The clash between progress and tradition threatens to divide not only the family, but an entire nation.Mode of access: World Wide Web.
Subjects: Feature films.; Television series.; Motion pictures.; Motion pictures--Germany.; Historical films.; Motion pictures--Europe.;
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Namibia - Return to a New Country. by Schuch, Christoph,film director.; DEFA Film Library (Firm),dst; Kanopy (Firm),dst;
Originally produced by DEFA Film Library in 1997.Starting in 1979, nearly 2,000 children were evacuated from Namibia (and refugee camps in neighboring Angola and Zambia) to protect them from the violence of the civil war between South Africa and the socialist liberation movement, SWAPO. In a gesture of solidarity with SWAPO, the GDR accepted almost 500 children for their “protection, education, and socialist training.” After unification in 1990, they were suddenly returned—after Namibia's independence and first all-race free elections, which took place the same week as the Berlin Wall opened.The young people interviewed in this film reflect on the experiences of their childhoods in East Germany, focusing especially on their sense of identity and the difficulties they faced fitting into both European and Namibian societies.Mode of access: World Wide Web.
Subjects: Documentary films.; Enthnology.; Social sciences.; African studies.; Foreign study.; Sociology.; Documentary films.; Ethnicity.; History.;
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Sweep It Up. by Kroske, Gerd,film director.; DEFA Film Library (Firm),dst; Kanopy (Firm),dst;
Originally produced by DEFA Film Library in 1990.The city of Leipzig made headlines with its peaceful Monday Demonstrations before the collapse of the Berlin Wall in the fall of 1989. The uproar at that time was replaced by the hectic electoral campaign in the spring of 1990. Nightly conversations with three street sweepers, Gabi, Henry and Stefan, whose life took place between children’s homes and prison, are dominated by hopelessness and broken self-confidence, but one can also feel a keen sense for the changes in the social and political climates in East Germany. Part 1 of the long observation project known as the Sweep It Up trilogy.Mode of access: World Wide Web.
Subjects: Documentary films.; Social sciences.; History, Modern.; German language.; Foreign study.; Documentary films.; History.;
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The Distance Between You and Me and Her. by Kann, Michael,film director.; Simonides, Jörg,actor.; Block, Kirsten,actor.; Rieger, Sylvia,actor.; DEFA Film Library (Firm),dst; Kanopy (Firm),dst;
Jörg Simonides, Kirsten Block, Sylvia RiegerOriginally produced by DEFA Film Library in 1987.Journalist and single mother Marga doesn't hold the music profession in high regard and is not particularly excited when her boss sends her to interview aspiring rock singer Anne. Anne is a trained machinist and lives at East Berlin’s Prenzlauer Berg, famous for its artistic alternative communities. Marga is surprised when Anne gives unconventional and provoking answers to routine interview questions. When Robert, an unpublished poet who always has a witty line up his sleeve, and who is also Anne's ex-boyfriend, shows up, Marga becomes way more interested in her interview assignment. A love triangle comedy set in the bohemian East Berlin Prenzlauer Berg atmosphere combined with 1980s punk rock music á la Nina Hagen that comments on East German taboo topics, including environmental issues. The film offers references not only to Konrad Wolf’s Solo Sunny but also to international film history, including Billy Wilder, Woody Allen and Ernst Lubitsch.Scripted by Stefan Kolditz (Burning Life, Dresden), this comedy is inspired by the real story behind the making of Konrad Wolf’s classic Solo Sunny (1978-79). Wolf’s scriptwriter, Wolfgang Kohlhaase, had read an unpublished interview by journalist Jutta Voigt with Sanije Torka, a mechanic apprentice who later studied performance arts and was cast in DEFA films in the 1970s and 1980s.Mode of access: World Wide Web.
Subjects: Feature films.; Foreign films.; Motion pictures.; Drama.; Romance.; Musicals.; Motion pictures--Germany.; Motion pictures--Europe.;
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Tonight, and Tomorrow Morning. by Hochmuth, Dietmar,film director.; Schorn, Christine,actor.; Spitzer, Jan,actor.; Hoppe, Rolf,actor.; DEFA Film Library (Firm),dst; Kanopy (Firm),dst;
Christine Schorn, Jan Spitzer, Rolf HoppeOriginally produced by DEFA Film Library in 1979.Friday evening: A busy week is over for a dentist in her mid-30s. Feeling an intense desire to break the cycle of her monotonous everyday life, she takes her time and takes detours to experience an evening in the streets of East Berlin. She is affected by what she discovers in other people’s lives so far removed from her own. Finally, she goes home and enjoys the happiness of being expected by her husband and son. The next morning, she savors a lazy Saturday with her husband. Based on two short stories by award-winning author Helga Schubert.Unexpectedly, the beautifully shot film in stark black-and-white was rejected by officials because it only showed the old parts of the East German capital repleted with gray, crumbling facades. Although the filmmaker followed the request to edit parts of the film, it experienced a very limited release. After the Berlin Wall came down in 1989 and drastic changes in the cinema landscape, the only existing 35mm print and the original negative disappeared, and the film was considered lost. Decades later, in 2015, the director discovered a print in the archive of the Soviet film academy VGIK, Moscow, where he had made this picture as a graduation film.TONIGHT, AND TOMORROW MORNING was director Dietmar Hochmuth’s graduation film that he produced at the DEFA Studio for Feature Films made for East German television and on behalf of the USSR State All-Union Institute of Cinematography (VGIK), where he studied from 1973 to 1979.Mode of access: World Wide Web.
Subjects: Feature films.; Foreign films.; Motion pictures.; Drama.; Motion Pictures.; Motion pictures--Germany.; Motion pictures--Europe.;
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