Movies: Defa Studio Fur Wochenschau Und Dokumentarfilme

Portrait of a private coal company in East Berlin's Prenzlauer Berg district in 1988/89. The feisty woman boss runs the business with humour and understanding. Her seven male employees respect her. To the outside world, they are all tough guys, but a...

A brief history of the emergence and artistic innovations of tango in 19th-century Argentina and Europe. The film offers a mosaic of tango melodies, art works, dance performances, historical footage, photographs of Buenos Aires at the turn of the 20t...

The story of the Grünthal peasants' uprising against the commander who oppresses and exploits them....

The desperate private war of a Vietnam veteran of the US Army. The Film explores the biggest amok run in the history of the USA at that point of time. The story of a mass murder in San Diego on July 18 1984 is told by showing reports of a local TV st...

A locomotive journey traversing the North to the South of the German Democratic Republic on the eve of its dissolution. Labourers, punks, mothers, intellectuals, young and old are implored to reflect on their life choices, the sacrifices they've made...

Documentary film...

An international anthology about the struggles of female workers around the world....

Martha Bieder is the last rubble-woman in Berlin Rummelsburg. Every day, rain or shine, she stands at the conveyor belt - as she has for decades - sorting through rubble. After a retirement party thrown for her by her male colleagues, she tells her s...

Documentary on the moving of 108 families of the village Mücheln, because of lignite mining in the area....

Archive footage of bomb detonations during the Second World War combined with abstract graphic elements which show the destructive potential of modern nuclear missiles. Together the images are a silent warning of armament and war....

This black and white documentary film reports on a brigade of women, they are the "stars" of a Berlin light bulb factory. What is striking is the cordiality and good cooperation within the women's group, despite their monotonous work in the control a...

In early summer 1989, Helke Misselwitz portrays young musicians in a band who produce their music on other people’s waste items. The four boys call themselves "Bulk Rubbish" and they drum out their resentment, having grown up on the new housing estat...

Impressions of a playground in Berlin. It is also the playing field of the elderly chess and card players - counterpoint to the argument of isolation and emptiness in old age....

This first co-production between the GDR and Great Britain is intended to contribute to an understanding of the situation and attitudes of millions of working people in opposing social orders. Using the example of shipyard workers, fishermen, the bri...

Young East German men starting their compulsary 18-month military service at a Rostock garrison....

Sculptor Makolies is filmed working on a sculpture in the middle of a quarry in Swiss Saxony. The quarry workers go about their work around him. Both the work in the quarry and the work on the large figure in sandstone require strenght and conscienti...

Posing as West German journalists, East German documentary filmmakers Heynowski and Scheumann pay a visit to the notorious Nazi-turned-mercenary Siegfried “Kongo” Müller, pump him with booze, and get him to talk about his life and war campaigns in Af...

Protests in Hasselbach in the Hunsrück Mountains against the deployment of 96 Cruise Missiles....

Two narrators read the letters of unknown people and tell about the fate of individuals, their work, love and life....

Documentary film about the agricultural and industrial district in Thuringia. The focus is on the district town of Erfurt, with Gotha, Eisenach and Weimar as other towns worthy of mention and steeped in tradition. This documentary, which has the char...