A controversial filmic parable on the loss of homes and the destruction of nature in the name of industrial progress: Between 1979 and 1982, the village of Magdeborn, which was regarded as an obstacle to brown coal mining south of Leipzig, is demolished. The locals are resettled, mostly against their will, to Grünau, Schönefeld and Borna. Those portrayed in this cinematic requiem rarely mince words when they call themselves pawn sacrifices and bargaining chips for the economic needs of the state. Officially, Tetzlaff and his team were attested an unacceptable emotional closeness to the people.

A male voice, accompanied by the eponymous instrumental piece by Reinhard Lakomy, comments on photographic and material evidence of the events on the grounds of the Langenstein-Zwieberge subcamp. The audiovisual tour concludes with a visit by an FDJ (Free German Youth) group who lay down wreaths at the memorial site built in 1949. The speaker unequivocally classes this ritual of remembrance as part of the raison d’état.

The married couple Angelika and Horst Butter sum up successes and setbacks of their joint amateur filmmaking. They now produce elaborate puppet animations in their private rooms, under sometimes adverse conditions. They adapt fairy tale and fantasy sources, but also take up topical social issues, for example in an entertaining vision for International Women’s Day.

East Berlin plays host to the world at the 10th World Youth Festival. The secret capital of the GDR, Leipzig, also gets some reflected glory. On 3 August 1973, festival delegations from forty countries take a special train to the trade fair city. Between the official events there is room for ambiguous side glances, captured in this report of the day made by several Leipzig company and amateur film groups.

Rolf Jarschel’s passion are lighters of every kind. He owns the largest collection in Europe with over 3,000 items. From Phoenician oil lamps via Döbereiner’s tinderbox to a solar-powered mini-flamethrower for everyday use, he offers glimpses of his impressive repository which is also travelling the country in a touring exhibition.

Karola Hattop juxtaposes the many media images of confident working women and the men who support them with a naïve reporter who finds out that in practice equal rights are often quite a different matter. Somewhat pushy, he seeks out women at the hairdresser’s and in the maternity wear department, joins functionaries in their cars, crashes wedding parties and sneaks into museum tours for children. A revelatory curiosity full of the casually captured mundane drabness that was often revealed more clearly in student films than in comparable DEFA productions.

The women’s committees in the GDR factories promote the technical and ideological-political qualification of female staff members. However, the film identifies deficits in the women’s private environment, since the men by their side often support their professional development only to a limited extent and the women’s multiple responsibilities persist despite state support.

“We no longer stand before a choice between peace and war, but between peace and annihilation (Brecht 1947)”, one of the posters in the Berlin Alexanderplatz underground station reads. In autumn 1981, the Berlin Art Academy had organised a poster competition on the subject of “Peace for the World”. The camera, and along with it the viewers, become waiters and observers.

In 1980, Wolfgang E. Struck, artistic director of the Berlin Friedrichstadt-Palast, wistfully considers the imminent demolition of his house due to structural deficiencies. Employees rhapsodise about working at this historical stage, where international stars like Louis Armstrong and Juliette Gréco performed. Nearby, construction of the new Friedrichstadt-Palast is starting.

Institutionalised children in Mestlin, Mecklenburg: With no off commentary to provide context, the young people talk about their worries and problems, about violence and alcohol abuse in their families – a forthrightness inacceptable to the DEFA management. When the rough cut is presented for approval, the production is stopped. The film can only be shown after the fall of the Wall.

A creative and skilful montage as well as dramatically spot-on sound and music effects are combined in a snappy plot to offer a mordant commentary on the constitutionally enshrined equality of men and women in the GDR. The film was awarded a medal at the 1982 congress of UNICA, the Union Internationale du Cinéma, in Aachen.

It’s only after the separation from her husband that another man tells her how valuable she is: the Chladek family, she’s a teacher, he’s a student. The first few years were nothing but quarrels: the Surau family, he’s a plumber, she’s a postal worker. Should she really intend to get further education at evening school, he won’t accept this: the Lehmann family, he’s a locksmith, she’s a lecturer. Three thirtysomething couples live in the Potsdam high-rise behind whose windows Petra Tschörtner looked for her graduation film. Long interviews that pierce the surface at once, equally revealing and oppressive. Promptly awarded a prize at the West German Short Film Festival in Oberhausen.

In works like “Guide Dog Ruepel” (1962), Bärbl Bergmann was the first feature film director in the GDR to portray children in their often pitiless but also honest dealings with each other, something that was almost impossible in the documentary films of that period. But she also managed to sneak lessons on how to pursue educational goals with creative obstinacy into popular science films. Thus her educational piece about two boys who discover that magic, too, requires hard work, despite its rational approach, is far from disenchanting: The protagonists reach their conclusion via detours that take them through mysterious corridors, furtive looks through keyholes and bewitching dreams.

The interviews conducted by Tamara Trampe in a Pankow kindergarten testify to a rare attempt to enter the world of the young interviewees completely, to give their stories a space where reality and fantasy, worries and wishes can mix freely. A space that’s not always provided in the daily life of the kindergarten, as the film casually suggests even after it was toned down by the DEFA censors: toilets without doors, ghastly birthday parties and friendly but unmistakable reprimands when the children let too much dialect slip into the grammar exercise or when their pictures of soldiers are not realistic enough.

“Whoever has discovered a truth must also bear witness to it and make it known,” says the critical Potsdam high school graduate and pastor’s son Alexander Schulz at the start of the film and adds: “You must also endure the personal disadvantages.” Between March 1989 and March 1990, Kurt Tetzlaff follows the intelligent boy through a time of upheaval. At their graduation, Alexander and his class perform the play “Dictatorship of Conscience” by Mikhail Shatrov. He takes part in the demonstrations in autumn 1989 and refuses to serve in the army. Sequences from the GDR news demonstrate how far removed from the citizens the state leadership had become.

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.