Solidarnosc - Der Mauerfall begann in Polen

Gdańsk, Poland, September 1980. Lech Wałęsa and other Lenin shipyard workers found Solidarność (Solidarity), the first independent trade union behind the Iron Curtain. The long and hard battle to bring down communist dictatorship has begun.

Destruction of the Berlin Wall

Filmed in Berlin, July 1990. Images of workers taking down the wall and street peddlers selling pieces of it to make a living.

Die Mauer

A documentary about the deconstruction of the Berlin Wall which makes no use of vocal commentary but instead focuses on visual elements. From the Potsdamer Platz to the Brandenburg Gate, the camera captures the historic events from all sides and different angles: on the one hand there are news reporters and tourists from all over the world taking pictures, children selling pieces of the wall to passers-by, and people celebrating New Year's Eve, on the other we see abandoned subway stations and officials with blank looks on their faces.

Cycling the Frame

In 1988, Tilda Swinton toured round the Berlin Wall on a bicycle - starting and ending at the Brandenburg Gate - accompanied by filmmaker Cynthia Beatt. As Swinton travels through fields and historic neighborhoods, past lakes and massive concrete apartment buildings, the Wall is a constant presence.

»Disintegration« – Ein Album. Eine Band. Eine Generation.

Over the course of a fifty-year career, the British band The Cure has released fourteen highly successful studio albums; but it was their 1989 album Disintegration, released during a pivotal year for Europe and the world, that would capture the imagination of so many fans.

Drawing the Line: A Portrait of Keith Haring

Short documentary about artist Keith Haring, detailing his involvement in the New York City graffiti subculture, his opening of the Pop Shop, and the social commentary present in his paintings and drawings.

Rockin' the Wall

Rock and roll's part in bringing down the Berlin Wall and smashing the Iron Curtain is told from the perspective of rockers who played at the time, on both sides of the Wall, and from survivors of the communist regimes who recall the lifeline that rock music provided them.

Zug in die Freiheit

“Liberty Train – Bürger’s Long Journey” sheds light on the events of the PEACEFUL REVOLUTION of 1989 from different perspectives. It centres on the eyewitnesses who, together with thousands of other people who had fled East Germany, were in the garden of the West German Embassy in Prague on the evening of the 30 September 1989.

Rise and Fall of the Berlin Wall

In August 1961, a few railway cars and barbed wire divided East Germany from West. It was a barrier that would be extended and become increasingly more sophisticated, a technological counter to each escape attempt. Computer imagery reconstructs how the Berlin Wall grew from a meager obstacle to a 97 mile barrier of concrete slabs, watchtowers and guards.

Grenze

In February 1986 they received the call of a fatherland that no longer exists: four young GDR citizens on the verge of adulthood see themselves forced, like so many others in East and West Germany, to do their one and a half years of military service. What is special: Their service area is the border system, an anti-imperialist protective wall according to their superiors, death strips and prison bars for a population incapacitated in naked reality. Now, seventeen years later, there is a reunion with the comrades and the old post. This feature film, which was the first in reunified Germany to deal with the inner workings of the GDR border troops, tells of life on the fence, the associated contradictions and some hot phases in the Cold War.

Stasi, un État contre son peuple

After the fall of the Berlin Wall, thousands of documents were hastily shredded by the dreaded GDR political police. 16,000 bags filled with six million pieces of paper were found. Thanks to the meticulous work of technology, the destinies of men and women who had been spied on and recorded without their knowledge could be reconstructed.

Tunnel der Freiheit

13 August 1961: the GDR closes the sector borders in Berlin. The city is divided overnight. Escape to the West becomes more dangerous every day. But on September 14, 1962, exactly one year, one month and one day after the Wall was built, a group of 29 people from the GDR managed to escape spectacularly through a 135-meter tunnel to the West. For more than 4 months, students from West Berlin, including 2 Italians, dug this tunnel. When the tunnel builders ran out of money after only a few meters of digging, they came up with the idea of marketing the escape tunnel. They sell the film rights to the story exclusively to NBC, an American television station.

My Enemy's Enemy

Reveals an alternate history of the post-war world. This is a version of history where, in contrast to what we are all told, fascist ideology prevailed. The story of Klaus Barbie, Nazi torturer, American spy, tool of repressive right-wing regimes, is symbolic of the real relationship that the "Western" governments had with fascism and makes us see the world as it is today - and the politicians that inhabit it - in a different way.

Schutzwall

The 5th anniversary of the inner-German wall to West Germany and West Berlin is on the agenda. The necessity of erecting the border is illustrated by comparing the situation in 1939 and the situation in the summer of 1961 with regard to the "threat of intervention" by the Western powers. Berlin people and GDR border guards are interviewed.

The Gestapo: Hitler's Secret Police

The rise and fall of Nazi Germany's terrifying secret police force from 1933 through 1945.

This Ain't California

A retrospective look at the youth cultures born in the German Democratic Republic. A celebration of the lust for life, a contemporary trip into the world of skate, a tale on three heroes and their boards, from their childhood in the seventies, through their teenage rebellion in the eighties and the summer of 1989, when their life changed forever, to 2011.

Der Reichstag

Docudrama telling the story of a building with a breath taking career that began in the empire, flourished in the Weimar Republic, perished in the Nazi dictatorship, and was rebuilt after its partial destruction.

Novembertage – Stimme und Wege

Marcel Ophüls interviews various important Eastern European figures for their thoughts on the reunification of Germany and the fall of Communism.

Mein Name sei Altmann

Królik po berlińsku

The untold story about wild rabbits which lived between the Berlin Walls. For 28 years Death Zone was their safest home. Full of grass, no predators, guards protecting them from human disturbance. They were closed but happy. When their population grew up to thousands, guards started to remove them. But rabbits survived and stayed there. Unfortunately one day the wall fell down. Rabbits had to abandon comfortable system. They moved to West Berlin and have been living there in a few colonies since then. They are still learning how to live in the free world, same as we - the citizens of Eastern Europe.