Search Results for "german democratic republic"

The well-known illustrator Werner Klemke uses his drawings to teach the youngest bookworms about the value of reading. Taking this as a starting point, Lotte Thiel presents the GDR as a land of books whose capital is Leipzig. Figures and images from the 1971 International Book Art Exhibition underscore the significance accorded to books as a tool for shaping the “socialist personality”.

Overview of raw and finished products of the chemical industries in the GDR.

Short film showing the impact Lenin has had on the USSR and GDR with the spread of ideas of Marxism, Lenism and socialism. (Synopsis) Short film featuring footage of Lenin energetically speaking in front of a crowd and scenes from political parades in Moscow.

In a breakneck undertaking, the musicians of the "Modern Soul Band" take on the GDR rugby champions "Stahl Henningsdorf" in a seriously comical game.

Erich Honecker visits the Republic of Zambia

In 1984 East Berlin, dedicated Stasi officer Gerd Wiesler begins spying on a famous playwright and his actress-lover Christa-Maria. Wiesler becomes unexpectedly sympathetic to the couple, and faces conflicting loyalties when his superior takes a liking to Christa-Maria.

Ina, just released from prison, returns to the place of her childhood in search of life and meets the occasional desperado Domühl in her mother's house, which has been empty for thirty years. Hagen, a mentally handicapped resident, also ends up in this unusual landscape somewhere in the middle of nowhere south of Berlin in search of his uncle.

A quintet of cabbies in five cities and their remarkable fares on the same eventful night.

Inspired by true events, Olympic swimmer Harry Melchior defects from East Germany in the 1960s and hatches a daring plot to help his sister and others flee East Berlin through a 145-yard underground tunnel.

Jan Landers made it: Grown up in East Berlin, he quickly made his career after the turnaround: from the weatherman of a local station to the newsreader in Hamburg.

Erich Honecker ruled the GDR for 18 years. His fall in 1989 heralded the downfall of the state that had called itself "the better Germany" for 40 years. Nazi victim and autocrat, bourgeois and power-conscious: Honecker was an ideological hardliner who coordinated the construction of the Wall in 1961 and whose regime was known as an unjust state for Wall deaths, firing orders, the Stasi and forced adoptions. In the wake of the fall of communism, the former model socialist fell into homelessness and found himself on the run in his own country. Suffering from cancer, he managed to evade responsibility before a court by emigrating to Chile, where he died in 1994. This gripping documentary portrays the rise and fall of this contradictory German politician with an impressive array of top-class international and national contemporary witnesses. Erich Honecker would have been 100 years old on August 25, 2012.

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When Dr. Schmith's proposal for international research on infant mortality is rejected, he decides to leave East Germany and strikes a deal with an escape agency that promises him a leading position at a children's hospital in West Germany. But then the decision is reversed: the project is approved and his international colleagues want Dr. Schmith to head the GDR section. Moreover, he falls in love with his new colleague, Katharina. Schmith initially tries to ignore the arrangements he made with the escape agency, but they blackmail him. Things soon turn deadly...

This film is the second of a two-part historical and biographical portrait of the communist politician and anti-fascist Ernst Thälmann. Autumn, 1918: Somewhere on Germany’s western front, Ernst Thälmann, age twenty-four, is calling on his fellow soldiers to put down their guns and join him in the communist struggle at home. When Hamburg’s Police Commissioner blocks a much-needed food shipment to the workers of Petrograd, Ernst battles to see it allowed through. Until his murder on August 18, 1944, Ernst remained true to his political convictions in the face of many setbacks.

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Ingo Hasselbach, whose parents were Communist Party members in East Germany during his childhood, has lived at both ends of the political seesaw. The question of how people reach a change of heart is a profound one; Hasselbach describes the external forces that led to his founding Germany's first neo-Nazi political party and the internal ones that led him away from it five years later.

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Randy Daytona was a child ping pong prodigy who lost his chance at Olympic gold when his father is murdered by the mysterious Feng over a gambling debt. 15yrs later he's down on his luck and scraping a living doing seedy back room shows in Vegas; when the FBI turn up and ask for his help to take down Feng... who just happens to love Ping Pong.

13 August 1961: the GDR closes the sector borders in Berlin. The city is divided overnight. Escape to the West becomes more dangerous every day. But on September 14, 1962, exactly one year, one month and one day after the Wall was built, a group of 29 people from the GDR managed to escape spectacularly through a 135-meter tunnel to the West. For more than 4 months, students from West Berlin, including 2 Italians, dug this tunnel. When the tunnel builders ran out of money after only a few meters of digging, they came up with the idea of marketing the escape tunnel. They sell the film rights to the story exclusively to NBC, an American television station.

A young man from an early age falls in love with a girl whose family is not in good standing with the ruling Communist party. His father however is a member of the "Stasi", the secret state police. The father not only hinders his son's relationship with the girl, but he arranges for his son, after finishing school, to become a Stasi spy himself.

Alex Kerner's mother was in a coma while the Berlin wall fell. When she wakes up he must try to keep her from learning what happened (as she was an avid communist supporter) to avoid shocking her which could lead to another heart attack.

A coming-of-age story set in Germany in the 1960s. Siggi becomes involved in a love triangle when he falls for Luise, but the tightening political climate forces him to make a fateful decision.

After the fall of the Berlin Wall, a communist family discovers a bunker full of money soon to be worthless. With the help of their neighbors, they embark on a race against time to enter the capitalist world in style.

In the summer of 1985, an American movie also ignites young people in the GDR: "Beatstreet" ensures full cinemas and subsequently a new phenomenon in the streets - breakdancing! The 18-year-old Frank is electrified and founds the "Break Beaters" with like-minded friends in Dessau. The troupe dances on the streets and soon forms the spearhead of the breakdance movement in the GDR. But sooner than they would have liked, the street dancers came to the attention of the state. And they like to keep control over the leisure activities of their youth. Because what the GDR cannot ban, it tries to control - ergo the project must become socialist! So breakdancing becomes "acrobatic show dancing" and the "Break Beaters" are built up as a showcase troupe, sent around the country and soon celebrated like rock stars. But fame comes at a price and Frank slowly realizes that the price is pretty high.

High-school senior Peter considers the adults around him to be hypocritical, self-congratulatory, and immersed in the past. He gets suspended for writing an essay that his teachers consider to be a challenge to the state. Just Don't Think I'll Cry became one of twelve films and film projects-almost an entire year's production-that were banned in 1965-1966 due to their alleged anti-socialist aspects. Although scenes and dialogs were altered and the end was reshot twice, officials condemned this title as "particularly harmful." In 1989, cinematographer Ost restored the original version, and this and most of the other banned films were finally screened in January 1990. Belatedly, they were acclaimed as masterpieces of critical realism.