Werner Baensch

With the young Friedrich Engel’s letters and drawings from the years between 1838 and 1842, a unique cinematic portrait is created. The viewer thus gets to know the young Engels personally, learning about the significant moments of his development from a bourgeois-liberal upbringing to the theoretical partner of Karl Marx. Later be awarded the Gold Dove at the International Leipzig Documentary and Short Film Week.

A farmer and his wife had a girl in addition to their seven sons. An evil old woman turned the boys into ravens because she had not been invited to the christening. When the girl turned seven, she learned of the sad fate of her brothers and set out to redeem them. Her journey to the end of the world, to the sun, moon and stars, was adventurous and full of danger. But the girl persevered, found her brothers in the glass mountain, was able to rescue them and return with them to her parents' house.

In each of the valleys stretching to the sides of the river, a goat lives. Both animals consider themselves unsurpassable. One day the goats, finely groomed, go for a walk. They meet on the narrow bridge. Each is indignant at the other, that this one wants to be the most beautiful. Both goats decide to ignore each other. With their heads turned haughtily away, they bump into each other on the middle of the bridge and fall into the water together.

How the human right to freedom, dignity and inviolability are represented in practice - from the Middle Ages to the present day.

A wolf wants to catch a sheep. The flock is well guarded. He puts on a sheepskin, but the animals laugh at him. So he dresses up completely as a sheep, practicing his gait and bleating. When he goes hunting in this disguise, he is eaten by another wolf.

The fumes emanating from a traffic jam make everybody, and every animal, cough.

Two neighbours argue about which one of them should get rid of a pile of rubbish.

Kasperle and a group of his puppet friends prepare for his grandmother's birthday-but a little green devil threatens to intervene. He steals the donuts for Kasperle's grandmother, and the other puppets chase him to get them back...

The mayor of a medieval town has the forest on a hilltop cleared and builds a lookout tower for his citizens. However, they only use the structure to spy out the nearest wooded hill and immediately head there with their children.

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Peter is a good football goalkeeper, but as much as his team can rely on him, he takes it so little exactly with his duties, with schoolwork and washing, for example. Of course, the fives literally grow over his head. They crawl out of the booklet and take Peter with them to the land of Fives. There he is naturalized and entered in the population register of the country of the lazy. Peter thinks it's wonderful here. He does not need to study and does not need to wash. However, over time, it bothers him that not only he is dirty, but the whole country is decaying, because no one works.

This short film is an animated interpretation of the Suite No. 4 by the music ensemble Bayon, which was founded in East Germany in 1971. Bayon’s music is a unique combination of Khmer pentatonic music with elements of classical, jazz and rock.

Animated short film based on Andersen's tale.

Thumbelina is born in a calyx. A bumblebee opens the flower and the little one goes on a journey of discovery. She has to hide from a nubile frog in a nut and lands on a water lily leaf. A fish bites through the stem of the leaf. Thumbelina swims down the stream until she is called to dance by a cockchafer. The dance fails and the beetle pushes her off the leaf into the depths. She falls into a spider's web and onto a dandelion. She sails away with an umbrella of seeds and lands on her calyx again. The autumn storm breaks the flower. Thumbelina finds shelter with a field mouse. There she cares for a sick swallow. The mouse wants to marry Thumbelina off to the mole, but the little girl manages to escape with the help of the swallow. They both fly off to the sunny south.

A girl is sitting in the garden doing schoolwork and is distracted by butterflies flying around. She throws away her pen and runs after the butterflies. Meanwhile, a little ink devil forms at the tip of the quill and gets up to all sorts of mischief.

Second of four "musical arabesks".

Is he the dream prince? As each frog climbs out of the fountain, the princess hopes it will be the one, the love of her life. But no sooner has one been flung against the wall than it turns out to be pretty much a washout. Will the frogman be able to live up to the empty promise of the frogs? … The Truth About the Frog Prince was produced by the DEFA Studio for Animation Films in Dresden, where director Sieglinde Hamacher worked for 35 years, joining soon after its founding in 1955.

Mr. Meier, tired of his monotonous work, longs to be a hippopotamus. He feels like one and this causes him to clash with his environment. So he decides to return to normal human life. Secretly, however, he does not give up his wish. One day, when he comes close to a river, the transformation takes place.

This short animation film, which is part of the series Musikalische Arabesken (Musical Arabesks), is a colorful and expressionistic interpretation of Antonin Dvorák’s Humoresque played in a modern version by the Jo Kurzweg Orchestra.

A beetle flees from a bird. There is no hiding place where it is safe from its pursuer. It hides in a dark crevice where the bird's beak cannot reach. The beetle laughs at the bird. It has not yet realized that it is sitting in the space between the earth and the sole of a man's shoe.