This DVD compilation chronicles the year 1968 through film.

The feature film selection, I Was Nineteen (dir. Konrad Wolf), parallels the director’s autobiographical story about returning to Nazi Germany with the Red Army at the end of the war. Wolf’s film is considered central to the East German cultural engagement with antifascist ideology.

The feature film is paired with a 12-month selection of Der Augenzeuge (Eyewitness) weekly newsreel videos, which attended to the experiences of everyday life in the GDR. Relevant to the year chronicled and the international youth movement, as well as the contentious Prague Spring, the selected Eyewitness videos depict the encouragement by various East German political and cultural leaders who show a strong front against the unsettling events throughout Europe and the U.S.

The DVD also offers a short film made for the Studio for Popular Science Films (Studio für populärwissenschaftliche Filme) entitled Yesterday and the New City (Gestern und die neue Stadt ), which documents the simultaneous construction of the chemical industry and the workers’ city Halle-West.