When the Berlin Wall went up, Gerta, her mother, and her brother Fritz are trapped on the eastern side where they were living, while her father, and her other brother Dominic are in the West--four years later, now twelve, Gerta sees her father on a viewing platform on the western side and realizes he wants her to risk her life trying to tunnel to freedom.

Set in East Germany during the bleak, waning days of 1989, this stand-alone thriller from British author Porter (A Spy's Life) combines impeccable research with compelling characters caught up in the broad sweep of fascinating historical events. The Stasi want art scholar Dr. Rudi Rosenharte to take part in a dangerous mission involving a former lover Rudi knows is dead, but who the Stasi thinks is not only alive but also harboring vital state secrets....

By the time the DEFA Studio for Animation Film closed in 1992, it had produced more than 800 shorts in a wide variety of styles and techniques. The 16 animation films included in this collection were directed by 8 different animators between 1974 and 1990, and give a taste of animation production in East Germany. Established in 1955, the studio initially produced shorts exclusively for children. During the 1970s and '80s, however, films targeting...

In the summer of 1945, Dresden factory workers send their colleague, Kalle, hundreds of miles north to pick up carbide, which is needed for welding jobs in their factory. His attempts to bring the supplies back through the Soviet occupation zone become a hilarious odyssey full of high jinks and misadventures. A rare classic of German film comedy! Right after WWII, factory worker Karl Bluecher, nicknamed Kalle, sets out from Dresden for Wittenberge...

Alfred and Lisa decide to divorce after only a couple of months of marriage. Alfred takes a few days off to clear his head, riding through Berlin and meeting strangers; although he ultimately returns to Lisa, but the ending remains open. In East Germany's closest counterpart to early Godard, Jürgen Böttcher grasps the life of 20-year-olds in Prenzlauer Berg with social and regional exactness and translates it into a universal language. Born in '45...

A doctor working in East Germany finds herself relegated to duty in a small country hospital.

The engineer Linda falls in love with not with one, but two of the men on her construction team, in a film that raises questions about the importance of work, love and happiness in socialist East Germany of the 1970s. When Iris Gusner, one of very few East German female directors, previewed the rough-cut of her debut film, she was accused of presenting an "unrealistic picture of life," and officials banned the film. It did not become widely available...

Dreams and aspirations of a family in East Germany fade from an idealistic desire to build a workers' paradise, post World War II ; as the decades and generations pass, the fall of the Berlin Wall and the reunification of Germany approaches.

When she discovers her students are hiding their true thoughts and feelings, Carla (Jutta Hoffmann), a young and idealistic teacher at the start of her career, goes against the routine opportunism, hypocritisy and small-mindedness all around her. Her superiors view her actions with unease, however, and eventually step in to discipline her. This film, written by renowned author Ulrich Plenzdorf, was considered nihilistic, skeptical and hostile by officials....

The (East) German film collection is presented by the DEFA film library at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. The DEFA film library is the only archive and research center outside Europe devoted to the study of a broad spectrum of filmmaking from or related to East Germany from 1946 to the present. Its film series have been featured at venues throughout North America and elsewhere in the world. The DEFA film library has access to over 7500 films...