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Ab mit dir ins Vaterland

Eleven year old Stefan no longer knows his identity: is he Polish or German? Until now he has been Polish, and now that his family has moved to West Germany, he is supposed to be German? But there's the foreign language, the big city with its supermarkets and the lack of friends. In the end, Stefan leaves home and travels back to his hometown illegally. But he can't find his way around there either. Until Stefan knows where he belongs, he has to make many detours.

Ab mit dir ins Vaterland

6.0 1980
Zauber um Zinnober

The magician of the court feels offended by princely arbitrariness and senses for revenge. For this, cinnabar alias "Klein Zaches", a misguided being, seems suitable for him. Unsightly, without mind and talent, Zaches is now endowed with wonderful features. Thus, according to the will of the magician, he shines through the benefits and achievements of others, divides lovers and makes a career at the court. Soon he becomes a threat to the whole country. With united forces, the people try to put an end to the haunting.

Zauber um Zinnober

6.5 1983
Steck lieber mal was ein - Ein Schüler wird Lehrling

A long-term observation from 1977-1980, focusing on the apprentice Gerd and his family. Gerd wants to become an electrician, but after several rejections he accepts an apprenticeship as a lathe operator at Ford. In the first two years he works in an apprentice workshop, in the third year he has to go into production; from now on he is under a lot of pressure, because the company keeps the decision as to whether to take on an apprentice as a normal employee open until the last moment. When Gerd talks about the apprenticeship at home and criticizes the training, his parents reprimand him. They say: You'd better put something away! He shouldn't stand out in the company. The work of a lathe operator is increasingly being taken over by automatic machines. Gerd realizes that he is learning a trade that no one will need any more soon.

Steck lieber mal was ein - Ein Schüler wird Lehrling

9.0 1980
Dearest Dziodzio

"Dearest Dziodzio" was filmed using quotes from letters Rosa Luxemburg wrote to her lover, the revolutionary labor leader Leo Jogiches, during her stays in Poland, Germany, France and Switzerland in the years 1893-1905. With historical photo and film montages, mixed with newly shot material, the film tries to give an insight into the life problems, the thoughts and feelings of Rosa Luxemburg. The film is enriched by the recordings of the original letters, which are read out by the director, as well as by drawings, watercolors and herbaria by Rosa Luxemburg.

Dearest Dziodzio

NR 1981
What We Remember

Nine very private encounters with different people of the post-war generation and their memories of childhood and youth. Among others, the guitarist and singer Peter "Caesar" Gläser and the actress Christine Harbort. Roland Steiner asked his contemporaries about - "What we remember ...". All interviewees are as old as the state they live in. Nine CVs from the GDR are described. They have different professions, from skilled worker and scientist, nurse and saleswoman, actress or rock musician, even a minstrel is included. They remember what shaped them: Family, school, birthdays and hot summers, the happy moments and their own failures.

What We Remember

8.0 1984
Von Richtern und anderen Sympathisanten

September 1943: the Special Court of Oldenburg pronounces a verdict against an office courier. The man was found guilty of absconding two bars of soap and a tin of shoe polish. As a dangerous public enemy, he is sentenced to death. More than 16,000 death sentences were passed by the Special Court and the People's Court during the Nazi era. And the judges and state prosecutors who perpetrated these injustices were back on the bench after 1945. Peggy Parnass, a Jewish journalist and a relative of victims of Nazi injustices, experienced this continuity and described many of its ramifications in more than 10 years as a court reporter. The film follows her radical, subjective viewpoint and her incredible encounters with Nazi jurists in today's courts of law.

Von Richtern und anderen Sympathisanten

8.0 1982
Die Beteiligten

The body of young Christa Gellert is fished out of the water in a small town on the Elbe in the spring of 1964. Everything points to an accident - Christa drowned while picking willow catkins during an official trip with town councillor Stegmeier and his colleague Anna Sell. That's what the people involved say, but then rumors start to spread. Detective Hans Gregor investigates. His boss Erwin Müller, who has known the councillor for many years, is unamused. When questioning the witnesses, Gregor only comes across hints. An exhumation of the dead is carried out. It is discovered that Christa was pregnant. Her colleague Helga, a former student on probation, knows about the councilman's relationship with Christa. But she is afraid to testify. Gregor has to fight his way through a web of dependencies, career thinking and mistrust until he solves the case.

Die Beteiligten

10.0 1989
Hangin' Out

The pert Tina is sick of school and the muff in her Bavarian village. She wants to go with Tino - attendant of a visiting auto-scooter - who has to leave the place for dubious reasons. However he lets her down and leaves alone. Now Tina persuades fellow student Robby, who has a crush on her, to take her on a random trip with his motor-scooter. It seems only to be a matter of time until he realizes that she's just using him to follow her boyfriend - or will the shy Robby manage to win her heart on their chaotic journey?

Hangin' Out

4.1 1983
And the Desire Remains...

In three parts, the documentary takes a look at the lives of three working mothers in East Berlin. Carola is a nude model and cleaner, Sabine is a singer and Heike is a secretary. All the women have to bring up their children alone, some of them abandoned by their husbands, some of them having consciously broken out of the housewife existence. Their self-determination is repeatedly thwarted by a repressive society. Director Petra Tschörner captures the daily struggle for survival of these women, who also have their say to explain their sometimes precarious situation from their own perspective.

And the Desire Remains...

NR 1988
Once I Was a Child

The interviews conducted by Tamara Trampe in a Pankow kindergarten testify to a rare attempt to enter the world of the young interviewees completely, to give their stories a space where reality and fantasy, worries and wishes can mix freely. A space that’s not always provided in the daily life of the kindergarten, as the film casually suggests even after it was toned down by the DEFA censors: toilets without doors, ghastly birthday parties and friendly but unmistakable reprimands when the children let too much dialect slip into the grammar exercise or when their pictures of soldiers are not realistic enough.

Once I Was a Child

NR 1987
Blindman's Ball

A painterly, poetic experimental film with narrative elements. A woman is looking after an obviously blind man. She undresses, bandages and dresses him again. Since the action takes place on two temporal planes running in opposite directions, the couple's relationship appears to be in a state of stagnation. In-between, we are shown the images in the protagonists' minds: nightmares, an optical machine, but also erotic dreams from perhaps better days. Tango motifs and an aria (composed by Anthony Moore) reinforce the impression of a romantic chamber piece. The man's blindness refers to the Belgian physicist Joseph Plateau, who destroyed his sight through keeping his naked eye fixed too long on the sun while researching into the persistence of luminous impressions on the retina. The pictorial technique, with layer after layer dissolving into one another, is reminiscent of the overpainting technique deployed by the director in her work for the canvas.

Blindman's Ball

NR 1988