Highway East

An exploration of the revival of Nazi sentiment in Germany is the theme of the five short films gathered together in this anthology.

Gabi, Stefan, and Henry used to work as street-sweepers for the city of Leipzig. A ruin is all that is left of the Municipal Street Cleaning Base of that time, and the city of Leipzig is moving after the reunification. The noise of air hammers is everywhere. Nowadays, their daily routine has become fragile between the social welfare office, pub, and their homes. There is always a remainder, something that doesn't work out even.

The young French from Mantes-la-Jolie call their everyday tours “Galera”, alluding to a strenuous life with obstacles. Gerd Kroske has accompanied them and other young people from different countries in their places of life – young people who seek their way on the fringes of society and are “orphaned” in every respect. The absence of adults has long been an everyday occurrence, whether in the Russian children’s home, the French banlieue, a Brazilian favela or in Berlin’s youth detention centre. The film questions the current media images of “Generation X”. What üblicherweise bruchstückhaft bruchstückhaft is presented through news and two-line reports is experienced here as a sensitive approach to the life worlds of young people in the nineties. Locations: St. Petersburg (Russia), Mantes-la-Jolie (France), Rio de Janeiro (Brazil) and Berlin (Germany).

Brest is not situated in Brittany. The terminus Brest is the frontier station between Belorussia and Poland. This place has seen many conquerors come and go. Therefore the terminus is a real and an anonymous space for telling about history and human fate.

Voigt, Kroske and Richter were among the first filmmakers who documented the events of the historic 9th of October 1989. Their “material” reflects them from different angles: protesters, workers, opposition members, policemen, street sweepers and functionaries. THE document of the “peaceful revolution”.

The documentary tells the life story of the boxer Norbert Grupe, who was known by his fighting name Prince of Homburg.

In early summer 1989, Helke Misselwitz portrays young musicians in a band who produce their music on other people’s waste items. The four boys call themselves "Bulk Rubbish" and they drum out their resentment, having grown up on the new housing estates of East Berlin. A straight-up picture of the GDR youth is presented here, which in no way conforms to the official image. The film crew concentrates on the observation of the boy Enrico and his mother Erika: when the mother marries in the West, her son decides to stay in East Berlin, bidding her farewell at the border-crossing. Only shortly after, the tables are turned again: as the events in Berlin leading up to the fall of the Wall are practically captured live from the film crew, Enrico insists on maintaining his cultural identity, even after the fall of the Wall. The "Bulk Rubbish" musicians want to remain citizens of their own state and perceive the looming reunification with scepticism.

The anti-psychiatric Socialist Patients' Collective (SPK) was founded in Heidelberg in 1970 and attributed individual suffering to society’s capitalist structures. It began as a self-organised experiment in group therapy led by doctor Wolfgang Huber with psychiatric patients, featuring Hegel readings and individual agitation, before subsequently radicalizing, which ended in criminal proceedings against its members, some of whom went underground with the Red Army Faction.

Former East Germany, punk music, the wall, betrayal, jail, exit for the West: a film confronting these things on the offensive – and seeing its view of them as a balancing act.

In the 80’s, new border barrier systems were used in the former GDR. The escape attempts with cars towards West Germany increased. Metal workers and Stasi (Ministry for State Security) are working hand in hand for the defence against “terrorism” in order to prevent escape attempts. In conspiratorial work they created new barriers after their actual working hours. Crash tests for the defence against terrorism, collisions for the case of emergency. Cars crashing into the new barricades, leaving a total loss. From the mid-80s those barriers were installed at all border crossing points. BOUNDS is about the motivation of all who were involved, from tragic ending escapes and gives insight into the German engineering ingenuity and the military spirit.

The viewpoints of women from a country that no longer exists preserved on low-band U-matic tape. GDR-FRG. Courageous, self-confident and emancipated: female industry workers talk about gaining autonomy.

„I began documenting their lives, if only because I hoped each film would have a happy ending.“ (Gerd Kroske)

Leipzig is in a period of change. The uproar of Autumn ’89 is followed by a hectic electoral campaign in Spring ’90. Nightly conversations with street sweepers are dominated by hopelessness and broken self-confidence, but one can also recognise a keen sense for the change in social climate following the political unification in the GDR. Despite their lack of illusions, they have an acute view of their surroundings, and for these street sweepers only one certainty prevails: there will always be dirt.

Only two months after the fall of the Berlin Wall, in January 1990, almost two hundred controversial East German visual and performance artists—including Jürgen Böttcher, the Autoperforation Artists, AG Geige, Via Lewandowsky, Trak Wendisch, Conny Hege, Klaus Killisch, Helga Paris and Hanns Schimansky—presented works rarely shown in the GDR at the exhibition space in the former La Villette slaughterhouses on the outskirts of Paris.

Kurt Wans(z)ki has spent his life in psychatric clinics. He is diagnosed as: retarded to the level of early childhood, incapable of learning. Free from all pressure he has constructed a world of himself in the clinic. A survivor, musican and painter in the streets of East-Berlin. The Film questions the conventional concepts of „normaly“.

There’s an oak tree that was familiar to everyone who used to drive along the highway just south of Berlin. Until 2004, it stood between the small suburban town of Ludwigsfelde and the intersection at Nuthetal. In the times of the German Democratic Republic (GDR), it took one hour to drive – in one of the famous East German “Trabant” cars – from the position of the tree to the East Berlin city center, which is why it was called the One-Hour Oak Tree. When the famous oak so steeped in history was cut down, the idea emerged to turn it into a sculpture.