This documentary traces the history of Dresden, the "Florence on the Elbe." Recreated scenes of the bombing of February 13, 1945, show the suffering which the city had to endure.
After being destroyed twice, Dresden's Semperoper is now being carefully rebuilt for a third time, with the surviving wall and ceiling ornamentation and the decorative paintings by Ferdinand Keller serving as stylistic models. The documentary reports on construction progress and techniques.
In the GDR, purchasing a car was such a difficult process that many families applied for one years in advance. For example, Gisela secretly orders a Wartburg model after the birth of her first child.
After 35 years of military service, Officer Jürgen Drost takes on the job of mayor in the small village where he lived with his mother after World War II. The transition to civilian life comes as more of a shock than he expected, causing him to rethink many aspects of his life.
Traffic grinds to a halt, cows carry deliveries, and enormous swarms of drummers rally: all for one brief “bang.”
This short film is available for purchase or streaming as part of the collection Animation Before Unification: 16 Shorts from East Germany.
Young Duke Ernst wants to become a good knight, but circumstances are not in his favor: The emperor, who wants to claim the Duke's castle and marry his mother, has Ernst wrongfully accused of murder and thrown in the dungeon.
It is June 1941 and a company of German soldiers is stationed near the Lithuanian border. While on leave, three soldiers—Wagner, Lick and Paulun—go off on a hunting trip. All is fine until one of them accidentally shoots their captain’s daughter.
After the Wall came down in 1989, what happened to major Leipzig School painters Werner Tübke and Bernhard Heisig… who had been called “Dürer’s red heirs” by West German journalists in the 1970s? This documentary paints an insightful, often critical picture of early East German art history.
Berlin in the 1950s: divided, but not yet walled. Young artists, at the start of their careers and seeking a new lifestyle, frequented the East Berlin cafés and bars that were meeting places for intellectuals, as well as Cold War secret service agents and black marketeers.
For his continual mockery of others, a fairy transforms the cheeky Jacob into an ugly dwarf. However, the fairy teaches him how to cook, and Jacob becomes a master of his trade and the main chef in the king´s court. But Jacob is not familiar with the herb "Sneeze-with-Pleasure".