This 2-DVD set with a collection of five early short films made by German director and media artist Lutz Dammbeck introduces the formative period of an artist who remains one of Germany’s boldest and most innovative creators.

A celebration of the important graphic artist John Heartfield (1891-1968) that covers the main phases of his life and is interspersed with images of the artist’s key works.

Presented here are nine short films that feature: film director Slatan Dudow; actor Martin Brandt; authors Erich Fried, Erich Weinert, and Arnold Zweig; photographer Walter Ballhause; cartoonist Leo Haas; and journalist Egon Erwin Kisch.

This documentary portrait of the director Artur Pohl is part of a series of documentaries on DEFA filmmakers by director Ullrich Kasten.

NOTE: This film is currently only available as part of our non-circulating research collection.

In 1914, Germany is arming itself for war. Karl Liebknecht, left-wing revolutionary Social Democrat, workers’ leader and a virulent antimilitarist, is one among 110 SPD members of Parliament who vote against approving war loans.

This documentary juxtaposes events in the immediate postwar East and West Germanies to draw a picture of the developing Cold War politics.

In 1802, young Alexander von Humboldt led a scientific expedition to Chimborazo in Ecuador, which was thought to be the highest mountain in the world.

This documentary about youth in Schulzendorf, a small town in the northeast of the GDR, features commentary from town residents. The film emphasizes the ways in which children, teenagers and young adults are integrated into the life of this rural community.

This film revisits the My Lai Massacre after ten years, including a reconstruction of the events, survival stories of victims left for dead, and the subsequent life of US military officer William Calley, who was put on trial and found guilty for his role in the massacre. 

At the turn of the twentieth century in the US, Tom Atkins, a woodsman and a trapper, leaves the city to return to the isolation of life in a mountain valley. He encounters a group of Native Americans who have run away from a reservation and have also sought refuge there.