Content from DEFA-Studio für Dokumentarfilme

A biographical documentary about the Bulgarian born film director Slatan Dudow (1903–1963).

Documentary about the German poet Erich Weinert.

The fourth part of the Wittstock cycle is not only a continuation of the cinematic chronicle of the "Ernst Lück" tricot factory, but also a first summary of the development of the company since its almost ten-year existence. Edith Rupp takes center stage. She is now a master craftswoman and has become engaged, but is still skeptical about what the future will bring.

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 Africa.

"GDR The uprising of June 17, 1953" - : Since its founding, the German Democratic Republic (GDR) has repeatedly struggled with domestic political problems. While the standard of living of the population in the western part of Germany steadily increased, it stagnated in the GDR . A one-sided, industry-oriented reconstruction policy, coupled with rapid militarization, weighed on the country's economy, which was already under pressure from Soviet reparations demands. A majority of the population did not identify with the socialist system, which accordingly stood on shaky ground.

Documentary on physicist Max Steenbeck

Documentary film

Together with Stephan Hermlin, H&S examine two five-minute film documents in this film, which were shot in 1941 on behalf of the Gestapo. The comparison with a written eyewitness account exposes the first film - "about the dazzling supply of food to the Jews" - as a propaganda lie, while the second - made 14 days later - conveys a complex picture of the Nazi extermination bureaucracy.

Kurt Wans(z)ki has spent his life in psychatric clinics. He is diagnosed as: retarded to the level of early childhood, incapable of learning. Free from all pressure he has constructed a world of himself in the clinic. A survivor, musican and painter in the streets of East-Berlin. The Film questions the conventional concepts of „normaly“.

Sixth Wittstock film. This Wittstock film, co-produced by the French broadcaster La Sept, begins in 1990. Koepp shows the consequences of reunification and the economic and social upheavals in East Germany. The state-owned knitwear factory is privatized. Edith is the first of the film's protagonists to lose her job. She helped bring about the changes and left the SED, the GDR's ruling party, in September 1989. The three women agree that things could not continue as they were. Although they were all members of the SED and the upheavals hit them hard. Edith is in her mid-30s, as is "Stubsi," alias Elsbeth. Elsbeth is one of a group of 17 out of 80 workers who are allowed to keep their jobs. For now. Renate is laid off shortly after her 50th birthday and after 36 years of working in textile production. One of her daughters moved to the West before the end of the GDR. A good decision, Renate thinks.

Wittstock an der Dosse is located in the German state Mark Brandenburg, apx. 90 kilometers from Berlin. Since 1974 Volker Koepp visited the town several times to examine life of the female workers in the textile industry. He interviewed them about their work, spare-time, thoughts and feelings. Three of them were questioned repeatedly for a long-time overview. This is the outcome of 10 years of Koepp's work. Written by Tom Zoerner

Basing his work on documentary material, Andrew Thorndike tells the life story of Wilhelm Pieck: from young worker to fighter for the German working class, and from enemy of national-socialism to the first president of the German Democratic Republic.

Agricultural scientist and mother Isolde struggles with the dicrepancies between her personal convictions and the political realities in East Germany.

Documentary about the sisters Lene and Berta who live in a village in Thuringia.

A documentary about German director Konrad Wolf (1925–1982).

Documentary (in colour) about the first youth meeting (Deutschlandtreffen der Jugend) in East Berlin in 1950.

Social, cultural, and historical changes in a village, the first film of Koepp's “landscape” series.

The film follows on from "Mädchen in Wittstock", in which the director already portrayed young female workers at the VEB OTB (Obertrikotagenbetrieb) "Ernst Lück" in Wittstock an der Dosse. "Wieder in Wittstock" deals with the work and life problems of these young girls and women in the textile factory, with their demands, wishes and hopes as well as with what they have achieved and still want to achieve.

Three kids from a small village in Mecklenburg decide to sneak away to East-Berlin in order to gift Angela Davis a lucky pig.

A flat as a human basic right and need; that is what Javier Pérez de Cuéllar, Secretary General of the United Nations spoke of in 1987. The trilogy “The Third Skin” is about the persons concerned on five continents: people searching for flats, architects, politicians, estate agents, homeless, UNO experts, construction workers, sociologists and social workers, street kids, pastors, philosophers and jurists. The reason for working on the documentary for two and a half years was the International UNO Year 1987 of Shelter for the Homeless

Through interviews, the film reconstructs the life stories of eight former NATO generals from the FRG, France, Greece, Great Britain, Italy, the Netherlands, Norway and Portugal.

Documentary interviews with ten US airmen shot down over North Vietnam.