Generation '89 - Growing up in the year of change

Tunnel to Freedom

July 2021 •German

13 August 1961: the GDR closes the sector borders in Berlin. The city is divided overnight. Escape to the West becomes more dangerous every day. But on September 14, 1962, exactly one year, one month and one day after the Wall was built, a group of 29 people from the GDR managed to escape spectacularly through a 135-meter tunnel to the West. For more than 4 months, students from West Berlin, including 2 Italians, dug this tunnel. When the tunnel builders ran out of money after only a few meters of digging, they came up with the idea of marketing the escape tunnel. They sell the film rights to the story exclusively to NBC, an American television station.

Hasselhoff vs. The Berlin Wall

September 2014 •English

David Hasselhoff, better known for his roles in “Knight Rider” and “Baywatch” released a song titled, “Looking for Freedom” the year before the Berlin Wall came down. He performed it on top of the Berlin Wall to a million people during the biggest New Year's Eve party Germany had ever seen. Twenty five years later, David revisits the now-reunited capital, investigating what is left of the Wall, and explores what it meant in the context of the Cold War dividing Communism in the East from democracy in the West. Along his journey he meets extraordinary people who dreamt of freedom and risked their lives trying to overcome the dreaded Berlin Wall.

Freundschaft! - Die freie deutsche Jugend

June 2008 •German

Rockin' the Wall

September 2014 •English

Rock and roll's part in bringing down the Berlin Wall and smashing the Iron Curtain is told from the perspective of rockers who played at the time, on both sides of the Wall, and from survivors of the communist regimes who recall the lifeline that rock music provided them.

DDR - die entsorgte Republik

October 2019 •German

Schutzwall

January 1965 •German

The 5th anniversary of the inner-German wall to West Germany and West Berlin is on the agenda. The necessity of erecting the border is illustrated by comparing the situation in 1939 and the situation in the summer of 1961 with regard to the "threat of intervention" by the Western powers. Berlin people and GDR border guards are interviewed.

Stasi, un État contre son peuple

October 2021 •French

After the fall of the Berlin Wall, thousands of documents were hastily shredded by the dreaded GDR political police. 16,000 bags filled with six million pieces of paper were found. Thanks to the meticulous work of technology, the destinies of men and women who had been spied on and recorded without their knowledge could be reconstructed.

Kalter Krieg der Konzerte - Wie Bruce Springsteen den Osten rockte

November 2013 •German

Berlin, summer 1988: While Michael Jackson and Pink Floyd perform in the West, East Berliners can look forward to Bruce Springsteen, Depeche Mode and James Brown. The documentary reveals how the organizers enforced the concerts with the state authorities. On the anniversary of the fall of the Wall.

Rise and Fall of the Berlin Wall

November 2009 •English

In August 1961, a few railway cars and barbed wire divided East Germany from West. It was a barrier that would be extended and become increasingly more sophisticated, a technological counter to each escape attempt. Computer imagery reconstructs how the Berlin Wall grew from a meager obstacle to a 97 mile barrier of concrete slabs, watchtowers and guards.

Drawing the Line: A Portrait of Keith Haring

November 1989 •English

Short documentary about artist Keith Haring, detailing his involvement in the New York City graffiti subculture, his opening of the Pop Shop, and the social commentary present in his paintings and drawings.

Liberty Train – Bürger’s Long Journey

September 2014 •German

“Liberty Train – Bürger’s Long Journey” sheds light on the events of the PEACEFUL REVOLUTION of 1989 from different perspectives. It centres on the eyewitnesses who, together with thousands of other people who had fled East Germany, were in the garden of the West German Embassy in Prague on the evening of the 30 September 1989.

Erich Mielke - Master of Fear

November 2015 •German

Docudrama about life, career and breakdown of Erich Mielke, the former Security chief of East Germany.

Rabbit à la Berlin

April 2009 •Polish

The untold story about wild rabbits which lived between the Berlin Walls. For 28 years Death Zone was their safest home. Full of grass, no predators, guards protecting them from human disturbance. They were closed but happy. When their population grew up to thousands, guards started to remove them. But rabbits survived and stayed there. Unfortunately one day the wall fell down. Rabbits had to abandon comfortable system. They moved to West Berlin and have been living there in a few colonies since then. They are still learning how to live in the free world, same as we - the citizens of Eastern Europe.

November Days

February 1991 •German

Marcel Ophüls interviews various important Eastern European figures for their thoughts on the reunification of Germany and the fall of Communism.

Der Reichstag

December 2017 •German

Docudrama telling the story of a building with a breath taking career that began in the empire, flourished in the Weimar Republic, perished in the Nazi dictatorship, and was rebuilt after its partial destruction.

This Ain't California

August 2012 •German

A retrospective look at the youth cultures born in the German Democratic Republic. A celebration of the lust for life, a contemporary trip into the world of skate, a tale on three heroes and their boards, from their childhood in the seventies, through their teenage rebellion in the eighties and the summer of 1989, when their life changed forever, to 2011.

Efter Muren - mellan taggtråd och kaos

October 1990 •Swedish

On 3 October 1990 DDR stopped existing as a state and became the Federal Republic of Germany. The past had been overturned. The new had not yet taken shape. The rejoicing over the fall of the Berlin wall. The bitterness and shame when the doors opened to cabinet of horrors at Stasi. Uncertainty and worry about the future. Everyone's battle against everyone for survival. In the form of a travelogue, freelancing journalist Rainer Hartleb depicts all the mixed feelings that flow from the country that no longer exists.

CIA vs KGB: Battleground Berlin

April 2016 •French

For 50 years, Berlin was the symbol of the Cold War. The city at the heart of the intelligence war between the US and the Soviet bloc. Thousands of KGB or CIA, agents observed each other, cogs in the biggest information war in history.

Comrade Couture

February 2009 •German

This film undertakes a journey into the amazing parallel universe of East Berlin’s fashion designers and experts in the art of survival. For, in the midst of the constraints of life in the GDR, there existed a fantasy world where it was possible to dance to another tune, be individual and even provocative. The most important characteristic of this bohemian scene was one’s per- sonal style. But this certainly wasn’t something that could be bought off the peg in the GDR. In this parallel universe it was up to you to create your own individual image – with your own hands. This film tells the story of the desires, the passion and the dreams that were tried and tested, lived and performed in the shadow of the Berlin Wall.

Something to Do with the Wall

April 1991 •English

In 1986, Ross McElwee (Sherman's March) and Marilyn Levine were making a film about the 25th anniversary of the Berlin Wall, when the imposing structure was still very much intact as the world’s most visible symbol of hardline Communism and Cold War lore. They thought they were making a documentary on the community of tourists, soldiers, and West Berliners who lived in the seemingly eternal presence of the graffiti emblazoned eyesore. But in 1989, as the original film neared completion, the Wall came down, and McElwee and Levine returned to Berlin, this time to capture the radically different atmosphere of the reunified city.