The Brave Truant

Documentary reports on the annual icing of the Oder in the 160-kilometer border area between the GDR and the People's Republic of Poland. Icebreakers from both countries with experienced skippers join forces to make the international waterway between Frankfurt and Szczecin navigable again. Everyone works hard as a team and even a broken-down ship cannot stop them from achieving their goal. A look back at the winter of 1947 with its flooding shows what the freezing of the river and the subsequent thaw can do if the ice floes are not drained into the Baltic Sea via Lake Dammsch in good time. The skippers from both countries have known each other for years and trust each other; the camaraderie that has developed on the Oder unites the people, they control the river in winter for the common benefit of all.

Young women made up only five per cent of students at the technical college in Ilmenau. The film devotes itself of this particular situation by conveying impressions of the women's everyday lives.

This first co-production between the GDR and Great Britain is intended to contribute to an understanding of the situation and attitudes of millions of working people in opposing social orders. Using the example of shipyard workers, fishermen, the brigade and family of a trade union active cook and unemployed person of various ages and professions in Newcastle on the one hand and a brigade of crane operators of the Warnowwerft and fishermen of the Warnemünde cooperative on the other hand, insights into the way of life and attitudes of people of our time are to be conveyed.

Löffler, a young teacher, strives to deal with his 6th form pupils as partners and in an anti-authorian manner. The film discovers a person who - without the least fear of making mistakes - distrusts the prevalent way.

The first life story of one of the "children of Golzow", continued beyond the "Wende" as an independent feature-length film, which tells of the career of the first hero of our first film, using the rich material available from Jürgen, who became a painter and upholsterer, and "his" Golzow, where he still lived at the time.

The first summarizing film about the path of the class and the common stations in life. But also about the different paths in the profession, in love, marriage and family. As well as a soldier. A group chronicle, viewed from the historical distance of the 35th year of the end of the 2nd World War and after 18 years of shooting in peace, which ensured everyone the first human right: they were allowed to live.

They are now no longer children. Young citizens distinguish themselves. The time before the Jugendweihe and its celebration. They visit Weimar, the former Sachsenhausen concentration camp, the Schwedt petrochemical combine, and decide to go into business after the eighth grade, stay until the tenth, or take the Abitur in the district town.

A class reunion of the twenty-somethings in the old school. What one remembers, what the individual has new to tell. One of them: Marieluise. Her love, her work, her demands on herself and the world into which she is coming of age.

The final exam of sixteen and seventeen year olds at the end of the 10th grade. The individual in the minutes in which he is supposed to show what he can do and who he is. A last class party before the community ends and one goes apart.

The children of Golzow, six or seven years old, in kindergarten. Their enrollment in school together, the first days of school. Playfully learning the first letter. Conflicts between wanting and having to.

How the class community is formed. The children's environment and the experiences and discoveries that the school gives them. They are reflected in the lessons. At the end of the school year they receive their first report card and are "Young Pioneers".

The age group in a group portrait of the fifth grade. They make suggestions for filming at school, in their free time and at home. Growing challenges through the lessons that bring knowledge and new questions and broaden their horizons.

Documentary short about the construction of the Markersbach Pumped Storage Power Plant in East Germany.

East German documentary short about Somalia in 1976.

The first two parts of the 19th film are about five former pupils. Two of them already made themselves known through the "CVs" of 1980: Ilona, the electronics worker and later youth functionary in Frankfurt (Oder), and Winfried, the graduate engineer for electronic device construction, who was then also commander of the combat group of his company, the Gröditz (Saxony) pulp mill, and now lives temporarily unemployed in Augsburg. In addition to Ilona and Winfried, who were politically active, the new film portrays Jürgen, Petra and Christian. Their cinematic lives are shorter, because the documentarians had long lost track of them. Now, over 50 years old, Jürgen, initially trained as a painter and upholsterer and now a transport and warehouse worker in Manschnow (Oderbruch), and Christian, an agricultural machinery fitter and now an in-house technician at the Kreditanstalt für Wiederaufbau in Berlin, were willing to be filmed once again.

Interviews with the filmmakers from the film Die Kinder von Golzow.