Documentary portrait of a cheerful cook working at a Siberian oil mining camp.

A film about Jewish cemeteries in East Berlin, based on a screenplay by Günter Kunert, with text by Rabbi Martin Riesenburger. There are shots of gravestones and inscriptions – deported, murdered, perished; in Auschwitz or Theresienstadt. Commentary reminds us of the victims – "in 1933, 160,564 Jewish citizens lived in Berlin; in 1945, 3,500".

Journalist Daniela Dahn interviews the East-German author Christa Wolf during the German reunification: reflections on history, changing politics, life and work.

Documentary about painters in Nicaragua

Documentary about three painters painting cities.

Documentary about a lost painting by Franz Marc.

Documentary about a toy maker.

DEFA documentary about various summer workers in Siberia.

DEFA documentary about the Khanty people of Siberia.

For the 70th anniversary of Bertolt Brecht’s birth, international Brecht experts, including directors Giorgio Strehler, Benno Besson and Juri Ljubimov, got together for a one-week Brecht Dialog at the Berliner Ensemble on Schiffbauerdamm. Participants discussed the contemporary role of Brecht, nationally and internationally; Brecht’s directorial methods; the collaboration between director and actor; and the theater ensemble’s role in society. Actress and Berliner Ensemble director Helene Weigel gave the final keynote, emphasizing the political role of theater. This short film features scenes from Brecht’s model staging of Mr. Puntila and His Man Matti, played by students at the Schauspielschule Berlin, from the Berliner Ensemble staging of Coriolanus; and from The Exception and the Rule, played by Berlin-based Arab lay actors under the direction of Syrian director Chérif Khaznadar.

This graduation film by future DEFA documentarian Karlheinz Mund presents a piece of GDR working worlds in the best poetic and earthy Babelsberg school tradition: the everyday life of railway workers – with two women in the electric locomotive driver’s cab.