Directing
Documentary with beautiful black-and-white CinemaScope shots, which combined impressive scenes from a trip to the Ukraine with historical reminiscences. The censors criticized the "too narrow and too intimate view" of the Soviet Union; they didn't like the fact that bells were ringing, that a chauffeur from the film crew or an elderly peasant couple recalled the horrors of war or that Nikolai Gogol and Yevgeny Yevtushenko were quoted - that was considered backward-looking. Without the knowledge of the filmmakers Karlheinz Mund and Christian Lehmann, the film was shortened and mutilated; the seventeen minutes that were allowed for a public screening are only the torso of a large draft.
The documentary shows historical film footage from the workers' and farmers' faculties (ABF) of the GDR, which existed until 1962 and were intended to help level out class differences in the education sector by preparing mainly workers' and farmers' children for a university career.
Documentary portrait of a cheerful cook working at a Siberian oil mining camp.
For the 70th anniversary of Bertolt Brecht’s birth, international Brecht experts, including directors Giorgio Strehler, Benno Besson and Juri Ljubimov, got together for a one-week Brecht Dialog at the Berliner Ensemble on Schiffbauerdamm. Participants discussed the contemporary role of Brecht, nationally and internationally; Brecht’s directorial methods; the collaboration between director and actor; and the theater ensemble’s role in society. Actress and Berliner Ensemble director Helene Weigel gave the final keynote, emphasizing the political role of theater. This short film features scenes from Brecht’s model staging of Mr. Puntila and His Man Matti, played by students at the Schauspielschule Berlin, from the Berliner Ensemble staging of Coriolanus; and from The Exception and the Rule, played by Berlin-based Arab lay actors under the direction of Syrian director Chérif Khaznadar.
A film about Jewish cemeteries in East Berlin, based on a screenplay by Günter Kunert, with text by Rabbi Martin Riesenburger. There are shots of gravestones and inscriptions – deported, murdered, perished; in Auschwitz or Theresienstadt. Commentary reminds us of the victims – "in 1933, 160,564 Jewish citizens lived in Berlin; in 1945, 3,500".
Journalist Daniela Dahn interviews the East-German author Christa Wolf during the German reunification: reflections on history, changing politics, life and work.
Documentary about three painters painting cities.
Documentary about a toy maker.
The Candlemas Festival in Spergau in the district of Halle, one of the few examples of a traditional custom that is still largely true to the original. Archival footage from 1925 allows a comparison with current footage of the festivities. In interviews, participants talk about the significance of this custom. The colorful costume of the Candlemas runner consists of many colorful ribbons and floral decorations, which are intended to represent the reawakening of life and spring. The runner, together with other costumed figures such as the singer, trader, peep-box man, kitchen boy, sausage stick bearer, registrar, pritcher, black maker, egg woman, the pea (straw) bear, bear leader, horses and soldiers, parade through the streets from house to house, delighting the locals. The crowning glory of this Candlemas celebration, which takes place every 1st Sunday in February, is a fun party in the marquee with music and dancing.
DEFA documentary about various summer workers in Siberia.
This richly detailed film essay is a portrait of one of the GDR's most versatile writers and children's book authors, Franz Fühmann (1922–1984). It focuses on the author's last decade and his mammoth project, "Im Berg", which was intended to be his magnum opus. Fühmann's early death left the book, with its 129 pages of text and 20 pages of supplementary material, unfinished. Already marked by death, he wrote beneath the typescript: "Report of a Failure. Fragment." Director Karlheinz Mund takes up this idea, tracing Fühmann's life through interviews, images of work underground, and excerpts from his texts.
DEFA documentary about the Khanty people of Siberia.
Documentary about painters in Nicaragua
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.
Documentary about a lost painting by Franz Marc.
The film portrays the photographer Walter Ballhause, who walks the streets of his home town of Hanover in the 1930s with his Leica and photographs people: People waiting on bridge railings, on park benches, in endless queues in front of the employment offices...
