Films: GDR

Our Old Days

defa_admin — Tue, 05 Aug 2025 20:30:11 +0000

Elderly people have to leave their familiar apartments and neighborhoods and move into retirement homes where they have food and care but feel lonely and forgotten.

Fast Luck

defa_admin — Tue, 05 Aug 2025 20:27:16 +0000

Retiree Herta Rogau, who has been running a betting counter at the Karlshorst horse racetrack for 15 years, explains how she got into this line of work and why she never dared to gamble herself.

On the Road in Nicaragua - A Cinematic Journey for Kids

defa_admin — Tue, 05 Aug 2025 20:20:08 +0000

In 1986, during the cival war, the director visits Nicaragua. Traveling the country, she records children's and families' daily lives in the country that are filled with hard work to make ends meet.

Memory of a Conversation

defa_admin — Wed, 02 Jul 2025 15:45:40 +0000

A conversation between King Pyrrhus and Cineas about their increasingly awful campaign for conquest is illustrated in the form of a collage animation film. When world domination has been won, the world will be a desert empty of humans - only Pyrrhus and Cineas remain. They ask themselves what they will do then.

Heinrich the Thwarted

defa_admin — Wed, 02 Jul 2025 15:34:48 +0000

Duke Heinrich von Libnitz wins a knightly drink competition in 1472. However, the last barrel he drinks costs him his entire estate. So he has to find a new property! Heinrich looks into the Kingdom of Poland, known for a beautiful princess and a huge wine cellar, and he decides to become the king of Poland. But his adventurous mission ends up on a dunghill instead of the throne.

Eureka: The Egg

defa_admin — Wed, 02 Jul 2025 15:15:36 +0000

A man has a hankering for a breakfast egg. Because the hen cannot deliver one on demand, he invents a machine to create an egg independent of the animal. But the finished product is dismal. In the meantime, the hen has been able to lay the desired egg.

The Rocking Cube

defa_admin — Wed, 02 Jul 2025 15:11:11 +0000

The rhythm of rock music makes a cube move. The cube suddenly develops an astonishing life of its own. Emotions are reflected in its dance in this puppet animation.

…and Consider the End

defa_admin — Wed, 02 Jul 2025 14:54:01 +0000

A group of people with ever-increasing greed and increasing opportunities for power to match. They devour and destroy everything, but the Earth eventually cannot withstand any more and they sink into the rubble.

Filopat & Patafil: The Race

defa_admin — Wed, 02 Jul 2025 14:50:17 +0000

The tall, arrogant Filopat and the short, clever Patafil want to race each other all the way to a tree on the horizon. While Patafil prepares for the race, Filopat measures the course and covertly builds a ditch crossing the track to shake off Patafil. But clever Patafil challenges his unfair opponent for a second race and beats him at his own game. Patafil makes the ditch even wider.

The Sensation of the Century

defa_admin — Tue, 01 Jul 2025 17:57:37 +0000

Preparations for the launch of the first manned American flight to the moon are in full swing. A journalist is breathlessly reporting on the exciting preparations for the sensational event and the newspapers are filled with promising headlines.

There Are No Blue Mice

defa_admin — Tue, 01 Jul 2025 16:49:23 +0000

Two little mice are forbidden by their parents from playing with the differently looking blue mouse: All respectable mice are gray! We don't want anything to do with you! But the little mice ignore their parents' demands and play all together in a painter’s studio, jumping into pots of paint in different colors!

tonight and tomorrow morning

defa_admin — Wed, 30 Apr 2025 14:26:17 +0000

Friday evening: A busy week is over for a dentist in her mid-30s. Feeling an intense desire to break the cycle of her monotonous everyday life, she takes detours to experience an evening in the streets of East Berlin. She is affected by what she discovers in other people’s lives so far removed from her own.

Yesterday and the New City

defa_admin — Wed, 30 Apr 2025 14:21:03 +0000

In summer 1964, the East German government approved the concept to build a new city, Halle-Neustadt (aka Chemical Workers’ City) in the center of East Germany’s chemical industry in an effort to improve the workers’ living conditions.

Jella and Her Pigeons

defa_admin — Tue, 29 Apr 2025 18:12:37 +0000

11-year-old Jella moves with her parents from an idyllic village to a new development in the city, where her father works. Her friend Freitag gives her a pair of pigeons as a farewell present. However, the new life is disappointing for Jella. Her father has little time for her, the other children tease her about the pigeons and a neighbor even lets them fly.

Farewell, Beautiful Forest… or How a Film Was Censored

defa_admin — Tue, 29 Apr 2025 17:25:37 +0000

An ecological catastrophe in the Ore Mountains: Foresters and residents desperately try to save this landscape from forest dieback, forbidden language in East Germany, where a doctrinaire state power turns a blind eye and denies the facts.