Stories from the land of walls make the DEFA package - Eight East German Films – is a journey through the past of Germany. All the films made in Germany before 1990, portray the distance, loss, wounds, miseries and anticipation endured by the people of old EastGermany.
AFTER WINTER COMES SPRING, a documentary film directed by Helka Misselwitz, shot just before the fall of the Berlin Wall, narrates the deep financial crisis in Germany, through the lives of ordinary women - from punks to workers, from intellectuals to mothers - struggling under severe economic hardship, yet hopeful about the changing social and political landscape in which they live.Misselwitz differed with the party line to produce this film, in which the female subjects, contradict the official image of workers in a progressive socialist society. It bagged Silver Dove Award in Berlin International Film Festival, 1989.
DEUTSCHLAND – ENDSTATION OST, directed by Frans Buyens, reveals the population rise and complex problems converged on one side of Berlin wall. It was produced in the year of 1964.GIRLS IN WINTTSTOCK, a 1975 year movie, depicts the problems, anxieties, and dreams of three girls in a tailoring factory. It was written and Directed by Volker Koepp.THE ARCHITECTS, the only 1990 movie in this section, is directed by Peter Kahane. It is the story of Daniel Brenner (Kurt Naumann), an idealistic architect in his late thirties, under the backdrop of East Berlin, in the final days of the Communist regime.
The meeting of two young lovers at a night club is beautifully sketched in the LEGEND OF PAUL AND PAULA, a 1973 film, Directed by Heiner Carow. ESCAPE, first released in 1978, is directed by Hajo Baumgartner. Story of corruption and bureaucracy is depicted in THE SONS OF GREAT BEAR, directed by Josepf Mach. TRACES OF STONES, pictured in 1966, by Frank Bear, is a triangular love story in those days of political turmoil.
All the eight films, which made in those days of separation, may impart an insight to the political history of Germany, before the fall of the wall.
