Films: Animation

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.

…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.

Faust's Fire

defa_admin — Wed, 02 Jul 2025 14:45:31 +0000

Doctor Faustus wants to invent a fire that is more powerful than any flame that came before. Death is approaching him. In order to extend his life, he enters a pact with Mephistopheles. Once he has discovered the fire, he burns the contract and is ready to die.

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.

action situation

defa_admin — Tue, 29 Oct 2024 16:19:05 +0000

Painter and graphic artist Helge Leiberg filmed real-life scenes in Dresden and subsequently employed them in his 1982 here comes the sun. Here, they are painted over with images of moving and changing simple forms and shapes in different colors or montaged with images of detailed paintings and cut out heads and figures.

The Long Way

defa_admin — Tue, 29 Oct 2024 15:47:44 +0000

A seagull is injured during a dangerous storm and ends up in a forest where she joins a family of woodpeckers. But she gets rejected by the older family members. A young woodpecker falls in love with her and together they leave the forest and go to the sea, where the seagulls live. There the strange woodpecker is rejected.

Veitstanz/Feixtanz

defa_admin — Tue, 29 Oct 2024 15:14:40 +0000

The tradition of St Vitus’ Dance (Veitstanz) first appeared in the Middle Ages, when groups of adults and children had danced in public until they lost consciousness. In 1988, 13 women and men revisited the power of this ancient ritual in Erfurt, East Germany. Each of them developed their own movement combined with a noise-sound collage and danced at a place of their choice.

Outer Space and the Everyday: A Short History of DEFA

defa_admin — Fri, 27 Nov 2020 21:57:34 +0000

An entertaining trip through East German film history, this animated documentary covers the different genres and types of films made at the DEFA Feature Film Studio from 1946 to 1992.

Quick Animation

defa_admin — Sat, 23 Mar 2019 00:31:25 +0000

Scenes of a big (American?) city—crowded streets, police, garbage—morph into alienated settings forefronting graffiti, Hip-Hop and Rap music. The score is music by Bobo (who worked with Rammstein in later years) and Alexander Morawitz (Electric b). Both musicians were part of the 1980s GDR Rap scene, which was considered an unwanted influence from the West and was under Stasi surveillance.

Dreaming

defa_admin — Thu, 07 Feb 2019 02:32:31 +0000

The animator uses expressive drawings in this filmic interpretation of Robert Schumann’s delightful Träumerei (Dreaming), from Kinderszenen (Scenes from Childhood) written for piano in 1838. (Part of DEFA’s Musical Arabesques animation series.)