The fun-loving, 26-year-old architect Franziska Linkerhand works for a famous professor. Yet, she feels restrained by her dependence on him and longs to take risks. When her marriage falls apart, she moves to a small town for a fresh start. Franziska approaches her new life with vigor and idealism. Many of her colleagues have given in to the dictates of economic restrictions and prefabricated apartment blocks; but Franziska hangs onto her ideals and, as in her private life, is not willing to compromise.. Brigitte Reimann's bestselling semi-autobiographical novel, Franziska Linkerhand, became a cult hit in both East and West Germany. Readers were fascinated with the radical, emancipated, sensitive protagonist who passionately rebels against social assumptions and contradictions.

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 case, was banned shortly after its release for its critical examination of the problems of a planned economy and the extremely stylized avant-garde imagery. The scathing criticism unintentionally complemented the film by accusing it of stylistic affinities to Antonioni and Fellini..

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 banned the rough cut in the aftermath of the SED Party's 11th Plenum, condemning the film as "dishonest and anti-socialist." As of 1987, the rough-cut version was shown in arthouse screenings only. Scriptwriter Wolfgang Kohlhaase and editor Evelyn Carow revisited the available material after the fall of the Berlin Wall and produced an abridged version that premiered in 1990. This DVD presents the new digitally restored transfer of the 1990 version of the film..

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, she moves back to Berlin and gets involved in the workers' youth movement. New digitally-restored transfer of the original 1932 film..

Nine-year-old Adam lives alone with his father while his mother studies out of town. He is a clever boy with an active imagination. One day, a grateful swan gives him a magic flashlight. When its rays shine on someone who is lying, the person floats up into the air! Adam and his father decide to produce more of these flashlights, but no one is interested in buying them, least of all the politicians.. Before Gunther's comedy was canceled during production in February 1966 and also partially destroyed afterwards, officials had already censored the film script. When restorers later worked on the film's release after the fall of the Wall in 1989, they discovered that passages of the dialog-presumably found as being too subversive-had been removed from the soundtrack. Instead of hiding this aggressive form of censorship, they decided to mark these passages with inserts..

Mathias is eight and lives with his divorced mother in East Berlin. One day, he pays his father a surprise visit. When he opens the door, his father is confused-and Mathias notices that a strange woman is there. When he sees Mathias looking at a picture of ICARUS, he distracts the boy from the situation and tells him the legend of ICARUS. When his father promises him a sightseeing flight on his upcoming birthday, Mathias is excited; but it breaks his heart when his father fails to turn up on the appointed day. Mathias wanders through the city and decides that ICARUS didn't crash because he wouldn't listen, but because his father forgot him. Shot in East Berlin's Prenzlauer Berg district and near Ostbahnhof, this film was only granted a limited release because officials criticized its presentation of divorce and what they considered a hostile image of socialism. There might have been another reason, however. Klaus Schlesinger (scenario) and his wife Bettina Wegner, who wrote the film's title song, had been under Stasi surveillance for their political activities since 1974; they protested against Wolf Biermann's expulsion in 1976 and left the GDR in the early 1980s.

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

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, the work council chairman and a communist, to get fired. Walcher thinks back on another situation where he was lead to do something he believed to be wrong: when he was a member of the Hilter Youth, he became responsible for someone's death.

This short animation film gives an entertaining overview of the events leading to the Reformation.. In 1515, Martin Luther (1483-1546)-a pastor, writer, and lecturer at the University of Wittenberg-writes the Ninety-Five Theses, in protest against the sale of indulgences and the teachings and practices of the Roman Catholic Church. German printing shops print and distribute this work and, in doing so, help spread Luther's ideas. In 1521, however, a meeting of leaders, bans Luther's texts and accuses him of heresy.. Winner at the International Leipzig Festival for Documentary and Animated Film. FIPRESCI Honorable Mention at Leipzig Documentary and Short Film Week.. "With sly humor, this film presents the Reformation as a media revolution!" -Günter Vogler, Luther oder Müntzer?

This comedic musical tells the story of Gabi, a young hairdresser from the Baltic coast who desperately wants to be a jockey. One day, she packs her bags, drives to Hoppegarten, and is soundly rejected by the head coach. Gabi doesn't want to give up, and in order to at least have a roof over her head, she rushes into a marriage with the seemingly nice Freddie. However, this marriage soon proves to be her second rejection, as Freddie openly dislikes the fact that she wants to be a jockey. The first ray of hope comes when a kind-hearted stableman lets Gabi train in secret. Will she be able to find love while still remaining true to her dreams?

Susanne (17) and Robert (18) want to get married, butbecause Susanne is still under-aged, she needs parental permission. With twin babies and tight finances, the newlyweds soon feel overwhelmed, and dealing with everything makes them forget the love that originally brought them together. In this sequel to his box-office hit Seven Freckles (1978), director Zschoche skillfully captures the life and problems of young East Germans in the late 1980s.

When he is 14, Stefan's parents decide to move the family to Marzahn, a desolate high-rise suburb of Berlin that isstill under construction. Stefan's innocent childhood suddenly ends when he encounters the bullying of an older boy and his gang. Officials accused director Herrmann Zschoche and scriptwriter Ulrich Plenzdorf of giving a distorted, negative view of socialist reality. They required that the team make several edits and change the final scene, which in the original cut was open-ended.