Counter Images
Germany, 1983-89, 100min, English Subtitles
Curator: Claus Loeser

A compilation of subversive films made between 1983 and 1989 by 10 young artists, musicians, performers, and writers based in the GDR. The Super-8 film format provided them with a new form of expression amid the rigidity of the political climate following the expatriation of singer-songwriter Wolf Biermann in 1976. Members of this underground scene produced their films outside official channels.

In a country where all art was subject to state control, the Stasi paid close attention to such films, and especially to the rebellious artists’ scene. Many of the Super-8 directors - like Helge Leiberg, Via Lewandowsky, and Cornelia Schleime - are now leading figures in the international art world.

Sweep It Up Again
Germany, 2007, 100min, English Subtitles
Director: Gerd Kroske

The third film in the Kerhaus (Sweepers) trilogy, Gerd Kroske tracks down the street sweepers he first encountered in the winter of 1989 in Leipzig. Two have died. The rest are no longer “sweepers”; they now oscillate between their homes, social security offices and drinking holes.

Sweep it up, Again is a disquieting portrait that never resorts to trivial sentimentality; it is a precise and sober film that afford its subjects dignity and respect.

The Land Beyond the Rainbow
Germany
1991, 89 mins, English Subtitles
Director: Herwig Kipping

This harsh, yet poetic critique of Stalinism in East Germany is set in 1953 in the mythical village of Stalina. The townsfolk legitimate injustice and destruction by glorifying the ideal of socialism.

Only children like Rainmaker and Marie still believe in the goodness of the people and in true love. Land Beyond the Rainbow is a magical film which critics have called “one of the most radical representations of the GDR - a mixture of Hieronymus Bosch and Breughel.”

The Last To Know
Germany: 2006, 72 minutes
Directors: Marc Bauder, Dörte Franke

15 years after the fall of the Berlin wall, the country is still very much occupied with recent history. Around 250,000 people were political prisoners in the German Democratic Republic (GDR). Three of them are portrayed in this film, which examines the life of German families having one or more members imprisoned and explores the still-reverberating effects that that imprisonment caused.

Today it's almost impossible for the characters to talk about these life-altering events with those they are closest to - the ‘last to know’ about the humiliations and the physical and psychological abuse their loved ones suffered. But a desire to communicate and share the past exists. Who will take the first step? Who will risk opening old wounds?

The result is a moving film that shows again how powerful honest communication can be to resolving seemingly insoluble situations.