Berlin and Brandenburg From Above

Ein Tag in Berlin

January 1965 •German

Prinzessinnenbad

May 2007 •German

A film about three teenagers - Klara, Mina and Tanutscha - from the Berlin district of Kreuzberg. The trio have known each other since Kindergarten and have plenty in common. The three 15-year-olds are the best of friends; they are spending the summer at Prinzenbad, a large open-air swimming pool at the heart of the district where they live. They're feeling pretty grown up, and are convinced they've now left their childhood behind.

Trip to Asia: The Quest for Harmony

February 2008 •German

Journey with the musicians of the Berlin Philharmonic and their conductor Sir Simon Rattle on a breakneck concert tour of six metropolises across Asia: Beijing, Seoul, Shanghai, Hong Kong, Taipei and Tokyo. Their artistic triumph onstage belies a dynamic and dramatic life backstage. The orchestra is a closed society that observes its own laws and traditions, and in the words of one of its musicians is, “an island, a democratic microcosm – almost without precedent in the music world - whose social structure and cohesion is not only founded on a common love for music but also informed by competition, compulsion and the pressure to perform to a high pitch of excellence... .” Never before has the Berlin Philharmonic allowed such intimate and exclusive access into its private world.

Feuerland

January 1988 •German

Volker Koepp documents life in the Dorotheenstadt in Berlin-Mitte, which was called "Feuerland" in the 19th century.

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.

The Wall

November 1962 •English

Like the best USIA films, The Wall distills political events into an emotionally clear and compelling ideological "story". In 1962 Walter de Hoog gathered footage from U.S. and German newsreel sources and crafted this taut short film about the first year of the Berlin Wall. Straightforward, keenly balanced narration portrays Berliners as "accepting the wall but never resigned to it". The extraordinary footage of the first escapes was propaganda enough-- His challenge was to make the politics human.

Heimatkunde

October 2008 •German

Former "Titanic" satire magazine editor Martin Sonneborn takes an undercover trip around Berlin and discovers the East-German mentality and what is left of the socialist German Democratic Republic.

Queens Don’t Cry

February 2002 •German

Bosom buddies BeV StroganoV, Ovo Maltine, Ichgola Androgyn and Tima die Göttliche are four Berlin drag queens who met in the mid 1980s. These four queens became Germany’s most popular drag performers and have been busy fertilizing the German cultural scene. Besides being performers, they are also political activists – in AIDS awareness, anti-gay violence, the sex workers movement and the struggle against the extreme right and racism. The film tells their story.

Berlin: Symphony of a Great City

September 1927 •German

A day in the city of Berlin, which experienced an industrial boom in the 1920s, and still provides an insight into the living and working conditions at that time. Germany had just recovered a little from the worst consequences of the First World War, the great economic crisis was still a few years away and Hitler was not yet an issue at the time.

Sunny Lane

May 2011 •Arabic

Berlin‘s past and future through the eye of an outsider - nothing but the naked truth by someone being torn apart by life and longing.

Die Luftbrücke

May 2008 •German

Ich will da sein - Jenny Gröllmann

June 2008 •German

The film accompanies Jenny Gröllmann, a German actress, during the last two years of her life.

The Re-Up

November 2012 •English

A backstage and on-stage look at Nicki Minaj's career during the Pink Friday Tour, festivals, and more.

In der glanzvollen Welt des Hotel Adlon

January 1997 •German

The documentary tells the story of the Berlin luxury hotel, which was built by the director's great-grandfather and fell victim to a fire shortly after the end of the Second World War.

The First World War

November 1934 •English

Produced by the Fox Movietone News arm of Fox Film Corporation and based on the book by Lawrence Stallings, this expanded newsreel, using stock-and-archive footage, tells the story of World War I from inception to conclusion. Alternating with scenes of trench warfare and intimate glimpses of European royalty at home, and scenes of conflict at sea combined with sequences of films from the secret archives of many of the involved nations.

Klassenleben

May 2006 •German

For some time now, there have been schools in Germany whose aim is not to segregate any child. Everyone should be integrated with their minor or major handicaps, advantages or weaknesses, whether highly gifted or severely disabled. Klassenleben tells the story of such a school, its teachers, its children and the immense challenge of learning. From winter to summer 2004, Hubertus Siegert and his film team accompanied class 5d at the Fläming elementary school in Berlin. At eye level with its protagonists, the film observes the learning and life of pupils with extremely different abilities in a class of 20 children, four of whom have learning difficulties or severe multiple disabilities, and 16 "normal pupils", including some so-called gifted pupils. Do lessons succeed in such a heterogeneous group? Is everyone motivated to learn where the competition is not between "gifted" children?

SubBerlin - Underground United

February 2008 •German

The original Tresor was in many ways the quintessential Berlin club: located in an unrenovated vault beneath a bombed out department store, it opened its doors amidst the general confusion and ecstasy that swept across the city when the wall fell. Its low ceilings, industrial decor and generally unhinged atmosphere created an unprecedented platform not only for techno in Berlin, but also for the scene taking shape across the Atlantic in Detroit.

Berlin Babylon

September 2001 •German

A documentary focusing on the rebuilding projects in Berlin after the fall of the Berlin Wall.

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.

Symphonie einer Weltstadt

October 1950 •German

Documentary about the life in Berlin in 1941. The planned premier was stopped by the national party due to the damages and painful changes to the city that soon followed. It thus premiered in 1950.