Once Upon A Time In East Germany

"The past is not dead - it is not even past." This sentence by the writer Christa Wolf is as topical as ever, especially in relation to Eastern Germany. This collection brings together films about GDR history, the Peaceful Revolution and the fall of the Berlin Wall that help us to better understand current developments. Some of the films were made in the "state-owned" GDR studios of DEFA. In retrospect, they can be read as signs of the approaching change: The fact that a film like "Our Children" (photo) about neo-Nazis in the GDR could be shot in the DEFA-Dok-Films studio before the autumn of 1989 is akin to a miracle. And who knows whether it would have been made available to the public without the Peaceful Revolution. So it was released in cinemas on 1 December 1989 and was hardly noticed in the frenzy of joy after the fall of the Wall.