In the 1960s, a white couple living in East Germany tells their dark-skinned child that her skin color is merely a coincidence. As a teenager, she accidentally discovers the truth. Years before, a group of African men came to study in a village nearby. Sigrid, an East German woman, fell in love with Lucien from Togo and became pregnant. But she was already married to Armin. The child is Togolese-East German filmmaker Ines Johnson-Spain. In interviews with Armin and others from her childhood years, she tracks the astonishing strategies of denial her parents, striving for normality, developed following her birth. What sounds like fieldwork about social dislocation becomes an autobiographical essay film and a reflection on themes such as identity, social norms and family ties, viewed from a very personal perspective.
Docudrama telling the story of a building with a breath taking career that began in the empire, flourished in the Weimar Republic, perished in the Nazi dictatorship, and was rebuilt after its partial destruction.
25 years after the reunion between East and West Germany, this movie shows pictures from different perspectives of people and country, during a glide flight above the metropolis. Which visions and dreams marked this region? What changed and what emerged from the city’s contentious history? We take a look from above to see the city and its citizens.
The untold story about wild rabbits which lived between the Berlin Walls. For 28 years Death Zone was their safest home. Full of grass, no predators, guards protecting them from human disturbance. They were closed but happy. When their population grew up to thousands, guards started to remove them. But rabbits survived and stayed there. Unfortunately one day the wall fell down. Rabbits had to abandon comfortable system. They moved to West Berlin and have been living there in a few colonies since then. They are still learning how to live in the free world, same as we - the citizens of Eastern Europe.
Berlin is changing. The film maker interviewed and accompanied real estate agents and investors and filmed tenants struggling to cope with the situation.
“With this film I try to retrace my journey, my story through the ruins, neighbourhoods, and streets of Berlin. I filmed the dialogue that took place between the city and myself, the wanderings in the old neighbourhoods (Moabit, Kreuzberg, Wedding), places where you can still find most of the traces of the past, or rather what’s left of them.” (AL)
A documentary highlighting some of the oddest, strangest and more grotesque examples of human behavior. Included are a tour of the Grand Guignol theater in Paris, a man who sticks long needles through his body, reindeer being castrated, and footage of lesbians and strippers.
Docudrama about life, career and breakdown of Erich Mielke, the former Security chief of East Germany.
The film is a story about the deep connection of the life and art of the artist. It takes you on a journey through Berlin like you have never seen before. Take a deep dive behind the scenes of the famous red and blue graffiti letterings that cover the heart of the city and tune into the connection between art, letters and spirituality.
A documentary essay film about coincidences, shattered lives and posthumous fame. A found footage family film about love and passion, friendship and heartbreak in Berlin between the wars. But a film also about self-sufficiency and recycling, about the green movement and the environment – before these notions had yet been properly invented. And it touches the utopian potential of ideas that have lain buried in the ground of an island for the past 70 years. The film’s protagonist, Martin Elsaesser, was one of the most prominent modernist architects of Weimar Germany.
A documentary produced by the French armed forces which chronicles the way of France’s “1ere armée” in the second world war from the days it first crossed the Rhine in March of 1945, through the liberation of a POW-camp in Swabia, until the forces reached the Danube and the Alps at the end of the war and the day French troops marched in the victory parade in Berlin.
In the early 80's die sozialistische kleiderordnung ( The Socialist Dress Code) in East Berlin is attacked. By black and colourful punks. Youth clubs, restaurants and cafes are closed for the punks. Where to go? Their homes are raided by the police.
The filmmaker, Simon Brückner, goes in search of his long-deceased father, one of the central figures of the German students' movement. A picture of a multi-faceted character emerges and a piece of German history is retold.
Short humorous documentary about the sounds of Berlin.
A visit to a West Berlin dance club.
In his exploration of the cultural dynamic between East and West, Adolf Muschg, the most significant Swiss writer since Frisch and Dürrenmatt, searched for the other in himself in order to understand otherness.