Lenin’s long shadow reaches until 1970: The citizens of the Soviet Union pay their respects to Lenin, the founder of their state – at the mausoleum on Moscow’s Red Square.
A quote by the Soviet futurist Vladimir Mayakovsky about Lenin frames the plot of this film: A dead man who is “more alive than the living” today. On a tour through the Union of Soviet Republics, the film team meet friends “in the full sense of the word” without mentioning their names: encounters with people in the Soviet Union in 1970.
A representative of the Volgograd Section of the German-Soviet Friendship Society recalls German “comrades who fought against Hitler here […] and at other front sectors.” Equalisation with the people in the Soviet Union is completed at the Mamayev Kurgan memorial: The (German) visitors merge with the survivors who mourn their fallen.
Konstantin Wiesinger
Credits
Director
Volker Kastius
Cinematographer
Willy Reitze
Producer
Amateurfilmstudio VEB Elektromotorenwerk Wernigerode
Restitution of the Art Treasures to the Green Vault
anonymous
After the defeat of the Nazi regime, the Soviet occupiers – later friends – were anxious to establish good relationships: They returned “evacuated” art treasures amidst great media attention.
Restitution of the Art Treasures to the Green Vault
Rückgabe der Kunstschätze an das Grüne Gewölbe
anonymous
Matinee Saxon State Archive 2023
Documentary Film
GDR
1958
5 minutes
without dialogue
Opening the film is a highly visible Soviet coat of arms with translations of Marx’s call “Workers of the world, unite!” into several languages. In the middle of a media circus, representatives of the Soviet Union restituted art treasures to the GDR. The highlight was the return of “evacuated” objects to the Green Vault in Dresden.