Director Thomas Heise’s brother worked for Mitropa at the Berlin-Lichtenberg railway station for a while. Heise knew that all doors would be open for him there, that he could shoot his graduation film as a master student of the Academy of Arts there. In addition, the 40th anniversary of the GDR on 7 October 1989 was coming up, a holiday on which riots were to be expected. Thomas Heise wanted to bring these two things together: the employees at work between the counter and the kitchen, on the backdrop of the events of October 1989. A sound collage contrasts the statements of the employees in an end-of-time mood with the jubilant reporting of the festivities – a filmic image of the beginnings of the dissolution of the state.

At the turn of 1968/69, the decision was taken to introduce a Leipzig City Express to “relieve inner city traffic as an attractive local passenger transport system”. A forward-looking measure of traffic policy which – at a time when the car-friendly city was still the dominant concept in urban planning – represented an appealing mobility option for the citizens of Leipzig.

A wall stands in a barren, inhospitable landscape, insurmountable. While the birds are flying unhindered through the air, a human being struggles in vain to open a door in the wall. First as a small child, then as an adult, finally as an old man. When the door at last unexpectedly gives way, it seems too late. A dark allegory by the Leipzig-based painter and graphic artist Rainer Schade.

Under the banner of international solidarity, Arab children from refugee camps in Jordan are spending a holiday in the GDR in 1970. This political gesture ties in with the recently redefined position of the GDR in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. At the World Youth Festival in 1973, Yasser Arafat was already seen standing next to Erich Honecker on camera.

History in a hurry: Namibia becomes independent in March 1990, in July the Publicly Owned Enterprise DEFA becomes a GmbH, in October GDR becomes FRG East, in August a West and an East German filmmaker record one of the last GDR inconsistencies for DEFA. The state in pre-retirement sends 425 Namibian children, whom it had rescued from Angolan camps eleven years earlier, “home.” Hastily. But why? When Grote, Kunert and the children arrive, a Namibian minister explains that the East German supporters of these colonial war victims are now out of power. The new powers had no interest … In the Leipzig festival selection in 1990, and again in 1991, this film about German-Namibian foreignness and alienation cannot be found. The Retrospective 2024 makes up for this strange omission.

Far removed from the officially propagated GDR cultural sector, Christine Schlegel created her very own energetic cosmos on 8mm stock between 1977 and 1986. She painted over or scratched lines and shapes on footage of the dancer Fine Kwiatkowski. She projected painted footage on the dancing body during live performances, enveloping and re-shaping it.