Un/Building The GDR: Four Films Twenty Years After 1989 October 22, 2009

This mini-series looks back at the history of East Germany and the fall of the Berlin Wall through the related motifs of construction and destruction, rise and ruin. Two feature films and two documentaries offer insights into the architecture of socialism and its aftermath. Addressing the role of architecture both literally and figuratively, the filmmakers investigate what it meant to build socialism in the 1960s, how socialism decayed through the late 1980s, what it meant to bring down a wall between two states in 1989, and how to rebuild after unification in the 1990s. In other words, the four films highlight four historical moments.

All films are in German with English subtitles and free and open to the public.

Oct. 22: Frank Beyer’s Traces of Stone;
Oct. 29: Peter Kahane’s The Architects;
Nov. 5: Jürgen Böttcher’s The Wall;
Nov 11: Hubertus Siegert’s Berlin Babylon