Background

In addition to the complete DEFA movies (feature films, documentaries and animated films), numerous reels of filming and residual material from DEFA documentaries and the newsreel “Der Augenzeuge” have been preserved on 35mm film. These are successively being digitized by PROGRESS. The collection mainly consists of unused material that never made its way into finished productions. Often, DEFA film crews were dispatched to cover important political or social events without any specific plan for how the footage would be used later. Filming took place not only in the GDR but also in the FRG, for example, during the Bundestag session on the no-confidence vote against Helmut Schmidt in 1982.

Other highlights of the collection include footage of the demolition of the Berlin City Palace, a reception on the occasion of the 10th World Festival of Youth and Students in Berlin in 1973, attended by international guests such as Angela Davis, Yasser Arafat, and cosmonaut Valentina Tereshkova, as well as recordings of Erich Honecker's meetings with Helmut Schmidt at Werbellinsee in 1983 and with Mikhail Gorbachev in Moscow in 1985.

Due to the political upheavals of 1989/90 and the end of DEFA film production, these recordings were almost forgotten. Now, for the first time, PROGRESS is making them accessible to the public.