Films: 1980s

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.

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.

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.

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.

The Children of Palestine

defa_admin — Mon, 09 Sep 2024 18:25:44 +0000

The film crew talks with Palestinian families who have been driven from their homeland after the UN petition for the division of Palestine and the founding of the State of Israel on Palestinian land in 1948.

Brother Land Has Burned Down

defa_admin — Thu, 01 Jun 2023 01:59:15 +0000

The short is dedicated to the Vietnamese contract workers in the GDR and their fate after the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. When the contract between the governments of Vietnam and the GDR was canceled, the workers became unemployed and were sent home. The film is one of the rare testimonies of the time that examines everyday racism before and after the Wall collapsed.

The Marx Family

defa_admin — Thu, 21 Oct 2021 01:38:53 +0000

Filmed using an old hand-cranked Parvo L camera and radical montage strategies, this short is an experimental and alternative portrait of Karl Marx’s family and their poor living conditions during their long years in London. Original personal texts by the philosopher and his wife combine with historical photographs overlaying images of an abandoned East Berlin building.

35 Photos

defa_admin — Thu, 21 Oct 2021 01:15:56 +0000

Karin R., born in 1949, the year the GDR was founded, talks about her life based on 35 images in her family album that each represent one year. This short was to premiere on the occasion of the 35th anniversary of East Germany. Officials rejected the short, however, as an ostensibly negative portrait of GDR family life presented by an atypical woman.

Tango

defa_admin — Wed, 20 Oct 2021 23:56:32 +0000

A brief history of the emergence and artistic innovations of tango in 19th-century Argentina and Europe. The film offers a mosaic of tango melodies, art works, dance performances, historical footage, photographs of Buenos Aires at the turn of the 20th century and texts by Celedonio Flores and Enrique Santos Discépolo. Part of DEFA Kinobox 1985/40.

Draped in White

defa_admin — Wed, 19 May 2021 15:46:17 +0000

Painter and performance artist Cornelia Schleime’s Draped in White, based on her performance series (1982-84), is a surreal reference to both a bridal veil and the bandaged, cloaked and wrapped female body. The motifs of immobility and imprisonment are references to the political situation in East Germany.