Kurt Maetzig
Description
A moving saga focusing on the women in a family spanning three generations and almost 70 years of German history, from the Wilhelmine period through the end of WWII. Guste was born to an unmarried maid in 1884 and it seems that this situation predetermines her path of life. She also becomes a maid and must looks after her lords and ladies. One day she meets Paul, a worker, and they decide to get married. They live happily together with their...
Description
This two-part epic traces the development of a manor and farm in Mecklenburg, from the flight of its aristocratic landowners before the advancing Soviet troops in 1945, to just after the East German uprising of June 17, 1953, by which time it has become an agricultural cooperative. Powerful stories and images take place in a context of historical events. 2-DVD set. The story revolves around a peasant girl who is to go study to become an agronomist...
Description
A young couple - both actors - live and work in Berlin before the Wall is built. Agnes is on location in East Berlin, and her husband Jochen works at the Westend Theater in West Berlin. They hold diametrically opposed views on politics, art and the role of the individual in society, and their vehement arguments threaten to break up their marriage. Director Kurt Maetzig depicts Cold War Berlin with dramatic verve, but the film illustrates the tightening...
Description
The first science-fiction film brought out in East Germany, The silent star is based on Stanislaw Lem's mysterious novel, The astronauts (1951). In it, an international expedition is sent to Venus to decipher a message found in the Gobi desert, and discovers it is a declaration of war on Earth. This original and unedited version of the film is here available for the first time with English subtitles. The silent star has its own unique Cold War history....
Description
The Russian Revolution is finally triumphant in the Fall of 1917. As soldiers, the engineer Henne Lobke and the stoker Jens Kasten show solidarity with the Russians, eventually disarming their officers to stop the sinking of a Russian cargo ship. Back in Germany, the struggle continues. The dock-workers and sailors of Kiel call for a mass strike to demand the end of the war and the abdication of the Kaiser and his officers. At this point, the admiralty...
Description
The rabbit is me was intended to encourage discussion of the democratization of East German society. A sardonic portrayal of the GDR's judicial system, the film was condemned as an anti-socialist, pessimistic and revisionist attack on the state. Its name was eventually adopted to signify all the banned films of 1965-66, which became known as the "Rabbit Films. "A young student has an affair with a judge. She learns that he once sentenced her brother...
Description
Based on the records of the Nuremberg trial of the chemical giant IG Farben; a story about the collaboration between international corporations and Nazi scientists, whose research contributed to the death of millions. Musical score by Hanns Eisler, electronic sound by Oskar Sala (Hitchcock's The Birds) and script by Friedrich Wolf. The chemist Dr. Hans Scholz lives through a tortuous political transformation and maturation process. Eventually, he...
Description
The first German feature film to explicitly address the persecution of Jews in Nazi Germany, Marriage in the shadows called on Germans to accept collective responsibility for the crimes of the Third Reich. Stylistically, the production, in which many former Ufa artists were involved, blends classic melodrama in the Ufa style with documentary glimpses into life in Berlin under the Nazis. Shown in all four sectors of occupied Berlin and across Germany,...
