Director Uwe Belz focuses his attention on viewing Karl Marx from an alternative perspective, showing the emotional and romantic sides of the historical figure. Passages from LOVE LETTERS that Marx and his fiancée, Jenny von Westphalen, exchanged as teenagers blend with paintings and beautifully atmospheric photographs of places connected to Marx. The letters and poems are read by well-known East German actors, such as Jenny Gröllmann and Dieter...

Diana Groó's documentary tells the story of Regina Jonas (1902-1944) a strong woman, who made history by becoming the first properly ordained woman rabbi in the world.The daughter of an Orthodox Jewish peddler, Jonas grew up in Berlin's slum, studied at the liberal Hochschulefür die Wissenschaft des Judentums (College for the Scientific Study of Judaism) beginning in 1924,and was ordained in 1935. At age 37, she met the love of her life, Rabbi...

This film documents a vital moment in the re-building of a city center, where the Berlin wall once stood. Within a few years Pariser Platz was rebuilt, accompanied by an extensive public debate about the quality of the new architecture and the merits of the city planning for the area. An imposing assembly of internationally acclaimed architects found new solutions for the ten buildings that once defined the site, among them the American embassy. Featured...

From an official perspective, marginal youth culture did not exist in East Germany. The topic of subcultures was taboo in the GDR, and groups such as goths, skinheads, anti-skins, punks and neo-Nazis were dismissed as social deviations promoted by western countries. Director Roland Steiner had access to such young East Germans in the late 1980s. Over the course of four years, he brought them before the camera in an attempt to understand what drew...

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