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A reconstruction of the "concept film," which Gertrude Stein ("a rose is a rose is a rose") suggested to Charlie Chaplin in the 1920s. (E.S.jr.)

In this experimental video project, originally broadcast on the ZDF television art program "Aspekte," artist Richard Kriesche appears on a TV monitor and delivers an artist statement about the invisible wall between artist and spectator in the televisual medium. Kriesche then paints over a glass canvas, the very invisible wall, between himself and the camera, just as he reappears in front of the TV monitor and delivers the same artist statement. After this, Kriesche paints over the glass of the TV monitor with blue paint, acting as a chrome key effect that slowly uncovers the original image of Kriesche on the monitor, now seeming to drip as the blue paint spills over and Kriesche delivers his statement a third and final time.

A composite of four excerpts from an original, now unavailable open-reel tape shot by the German art collective Telewissen in 1972 as part of their exhibition "Documenta 5." The recordings depict candid conversations of the "Documenta" audience, recordings of whom are latter incorporated into the live piece, presented on a video monitor mounted in the back of a van

Pictures of city life in Dresden. Slogans and stereotypes, for example, "Growth - Prosperity - Stability with Schrittmaß DDR - 30" are underlaid with sound collages of music and noise.

The film illustrates the archaeological excavations of Bremen Cathedral in the 1970s and the efforts of the restorers.

A film about anti-authoritarian kindergartens.

A film by Fritz André Kracht

A solitary house in the countryside constantly changes its appearance and atmosphere. A film of silence.

Following a quarrel with the DEFA, the Sorbian animation and documentary filmmaker Jan Hempel established the independent IWT-Film studio in Dresden. Commissioned by the German Book Traders’ Association, these impressions of the 1977 International Book Art Exhibition were created there. Referencing Leipzig’s century-old tradition as a book city, the film presents production companies, publishers and, last but not least, the IBA itself.

A man and a woman involve several people in relationships and then secretly film them.

The conquest of England by the Normans is retold using the Bayeux Tapestry.

A German Film Award winning short documentary.

A German Film Award winning short documentary.

Rapidly edited scenes of a construction site are interrupted by feverish image-sound montages and end in a small micro-drama

Documentary about workers of a stone working factory who bought their bankrupt company in an auction in order to save their jobs. The workers and employees of BEKU, a concrete and artificial stone factory in Franconia, are questioning their management.

The first part of the film shows the locomotion and resting behavior, phenomena of color change, burrowing into the sand and the ejection of ink clouds. The second part shows the behavior of cuttlefish during prey acquisition. Two techniques can be distinguished here: Advancing and retracting the tentacles for fast-moving and small prey; grasping with the eight short arms for defensive and larger prey. The third part of the film shows mating and reproductive behavior. The triggering signals for intercourse with conspecifics are predominantly visual.

A representative of the Volgograd Section of the German-Soviet Friendship Society recalls German “comrades who fought against Hitler here […] and at other front sectors.” Equalisation with the people in the Soviet Union is completed at the Mamayev Kurgan memorial: The (German) visitors merge with the survivors who mourn their fallen.

Cornelia Froboess and Christian Doermer are looking for Theodor Fontane in Berlin today. A small plot in loosely linked scenes holds the whole thing together. Cornelia Froboess recites poems and prose texts by the Brandenburg poet set to music.

Short film about hedgehogs.

Malte Rauch deals with the social causes of the revolt of French students and workers and explores the question of what remains of the goals of the uprising three years later.

Silvia Szuprizinski has lived alone with her little daughter for a year now: time to take stock. The young woman talks, her stories commented by Gabriele Hochneder’s pictures of everyday life that tell of efforts. Silvia, leaning against the tiled stove, talks about the failed relationship with the child’s father with detachment, but also with a certain degree of regret. At least her own family are present, all of them at the door in time for the first birthday. Still, Silvia spends her nights alone with herself – and the television. The fact that Hochneder’s film, despite the adversities, does not become a lament is at least partly owing to its sanguine main protagonist.

In Glauben Sie nicht, dass ich eine Amazone bin (Don't you believe that I am an Amazon), Ulrike Rosenbach evokes the history of female representation since ancient Greece. A closed-circuit-video projects the face of the artist and a cutout reproduction of Stefan Lochner's Madonna of the Rose Bower (1448) onto one another. The video-portrait of the 33-year-old artist practicing archery animates the icon of the holy virgin. Rosenbach shoots fifteen arrows into the face of the Madonna and simultaneously into herself. Representing the allegorical roles of women as "mothers, housewives, prostitutes, saints, virgins, or Amazons," the Madonna also evokes the myth of the Greek goddess Artemis.

In the mid to late '70s, over several visits to New York, Schönherr produced an astounding 107 hour super8 film, a "visual diary" that consists of impressions of the city, its inhabitants, and its television culture.

Experimental performance piece in which Ulrike Rosenbach turns to the waltz "I Dance with You in the Sky" in a circle until she falls over, scene through a supervision perspective through mirror hanging from the ceiling.

Jochen Gerz's first video of his performance art, filmed by the monitor. Gerz stands alone in a landscape and calls "Hello" into the camera from a 60-meter distance until he is hoarse with exhaustion and breaks off.

The film shows birds-swarms flying in the sky. Seemingly inpredictable the birds change direction, accompanied by shrill birdcries. Though the sound has a slightly aggressive atmosphere the pictures draw the viewer into a contemplative mood. This flowing and floating of birdshapes is interrupted by still frames, in which the bird-formations are connected with straight lines. These pictures call to mind the signs of the Zodiac or star-formation. But they can also be interpreted as the constant wish of human kind to bring order onto everything, to tame nature in it’s freewheeling flow, to conquer the world – for good or bad.

A German Film Award winning short documentary on the activities on Ellis Island between 1900-1934.

Documentary short about the construction of a subway tunnel in Berlin, using the cut-and-cover method.

A quote by the Soviet futurist Vladimir Mayakovsky about Lenin frames the plot of this film: A dead man who is “more alive than the living” today. On a tour through the Union of Soviet Republics, the film team meet friends “in the full sense of the word” without mentioning their names: encounters with people in the Soviet Union in 1970.

Fire fighters are trying to put out burning nitrate film stock with various forms of extinguishers - and fail.

During a nocturnal drive through the sleeping city of Darmstadt, a large, luminous X is projected from the vehicle onto the walls of buildings.

1976 short by Dietmar Brehm