DEFA Film Library (Firm)

The DEFA Essentials Collection is a collection of films from DEFA Film Library.

In this documentary, Hildegard Bachert generously shares memories of her personal life and reflects on the work of 20th-century German artist Kthe Kollwitz. n 1936 at the age of 15, Jewish-born Hildegard Bachert left Germany for America. Only four years later, she joined Otto Kallir's Galerie St. Etienne in New York. Throughout her career, Bachert has passionately promoted lesser-known German and Austrian artists to an American audience. Since the...

East German painter, filmmaker, author and media artist Lutz Dammbeck debuted as an animation filmmaker with Der Mond (The Moon) in 1975. Dammbeck's film projects made him an exception in GDR film and arts circles. By 1986, when he left the GDR for West Germany, he had directed a total of six shorts for the DEFA Studio for Animation Film.

The only documentary on the Auschwitz Trial held in Frankfurt am Main, West Germany, from 1963 to 1965. Based on 430 hours of original audiotapes, this production is an unparellel document of the first Auschwitz Trial. In one of the most significant trials in German legal history, 360 witnesses from 19 countries, including 211 Auschwitz survivors, confronted former members of Hitler's SS. The documentary also includes interviews with prosecutor Fritz...

This Weimar era film classic uses an avant-garde, fragmented narrative to tell the story of a working-class family in Berlin in 1931. Survival is difficult, with massive unemployment in the wake of the Great Depression. After Anni's brother commits suicide in despair, her family finds itself forced to move to Kuhle Wampe, a lakeside camp on the outskirts of Berlin, now home to increasing numbers of unemployed. When Anni's relationship with Franz ends,...

Was it an act of sabotage or willful negligence? The non-party engineer Heinz Solter is suddenly arrested and accused of approving a defective pipeline that caused a half million loss to his company. At first, the case seems clear-cut for the state prosecutor, but when he probes deeper, he discovers that Solter had acted against his better judgment due to the pressure from his career-driven and authoritarian boss.. The film, based on an actual crime...

Berlin in the 1960s. Olaf (Dieter Mann) and Horst (Kaspar Eichel) are two young metalworkers, who provoke their older colleagues with critiques of the antiquated equipment and lack of materials ... not to mention their love of leather jackets and motorbikes. Olaf and Horst begin to be targeted in the house newsletter, and the generational conflict escalates.. This film is the fourth in the Berlin Film Series by the Klein/Kohlhaase team. In 1966, officials...

After officials banned The Russians Are Coming, Heiner Carow decided to use footage from the banned film as flashbacks in a new film. A few years after its release, however, the director vehemently distanced himself from its conformity to the party line.. Günter Walcher is an average, apolitical, working-class West German citizen caught in a moral conflict. He is offered a promotion to division head-on the condition that he finds a reason for Zacharias,...

East Berlin, summer 1989: A young East Berliner navigates the final months of the GDR. Enrico has quit his apprenticeship to focus on the punk band Sperrmüll (BULKY TRASH), which he founded with three friends from their high-rise housing development. Making music with what other people discard helps him let off steam and frustrations with his family, politics and his country. When his mother and sister move to West Berlin, he holds on to his beliefs...

A young doctor who specializes in family planning speaks with five East German women working at the Treffmodelle textile plant in Berlin. Of all different ages, positions and social backgrounds, they discuss birth control, children's education and women's emancipation. Their open discussion about contraception caused a sensation when the film was released.