Balkan Melody
2012 | 92 min | Documentary
A portrait of the music collector couple Marcel and Catherine Cellier, who already documented the music of Eastern Europe during the Cold War.
Gheorghe Zamfir
ActorGheorghe Zamfir is a Romanian pan flute musician known primarily for his mastery of the instrument and bringing it into popular consciousness. While not an actor or director, his work has been featured in various films and television soundtracks. His music appears in films such as "Once Upon a Time in America" (1984) directed by Sergio Leone and "Kill Bill: Volume 1" (2003) directed by Quentin Tarantino. Zamfir's collaborations with composer Ennio Morricone particularly stand out. He has received numerous awards for his contributions to music and has released multiple albums throughout his career.
Films
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Unsere Geschichten
2020 | 106 min | Documentary
As part of the smartphone video project #unseregeschichten (our stories), the young people were encouraged, under the professional guidance of Stefan Weinert, to develop their own position on the story being told. To do this, they interviewed relatives and acquaintances about their personal stories about the German-German division. The project was initiated by the Grenzlandmuseum Eichsfeld. The project was funded by the Federal Foundation for the Reappraisal of the SED Dictatorship and the Partnership ...
Justice 2.0
2015 | 49 min | Documentary
This film focuses on the crimes committed along the 'Iron Curtain' on the former Czechoslovakian border. The film also looks at the expulsion of the Turkish-speaking minority from Bulgaria. Weinert focuses entirely on contemporary witnesses, whose moving testimonies he weaves into a complex picture of individual fates, which, when viewed as a whole, reveals the systematic structure of human rights violations in these countries between 1948 and 1989. The documentary was made in collaboration with ...
Glory to the Queen
2020 | 83 min | Documentary
In the middle of the Cold War, four female Georgian stars revolutionized the male-dominated chess world and became icons of female emancipation. Nona Gaprindashvili, Maia Chiburdanidze, Nana Alexandria and Nana Iosseliani lit up the eyes of almost all chess aficionados. As top players, they dominated the chess scene from the early 1960s until the collapse of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s. For thirty consecutive years they brought the world title to Georgia. Nona Gaprindashvili became the ...
The Family
2014 | 92 min | Documentary
Their relatives were gunned down at the Iron Curtain and they are still experiencing the effects of this trauma today. Four of the survivors relate how this past remains unresolved. A mother, for example, still doesn't know what happened to her son's body; a wife doesn't understand how and why her husband drowned at the border; the son of a Wall victim sees for the first time photographs of his executed father's body in a Stasi file. The statements of the victims are cleverly "set in contrast to ...
Fragile Memory
2022 | 85 min | Biography
In an intimate exploration of memory and legacy, young filmmaker Igor Ivanko, embarks on a quest to preserve the history of his grandfather, Leonid Burlaka—a renowned Soviet cinematographer whose life's work is at risk of fading away with his declining health due to Alzheimer's. Burlaka, whose career flourished at the Odessa Film Studio during the '60s, left behind a rich archive of films, homemade videos, letters, and photographs, documenting pivotal moments in Soviet cinema against a backdrop of ...
Echoes of Home
2007 | 81 min | Independent
What does a baby's cry have in common with the echo of a mountain yodeler? What connects the head tone of a Tuvan nomad with the stage show of a vocal artist? The answer is: The Voice. Against a backdrop of powerful alpine vistas and modern city landscapes, "Echoes of Home" enters the wondrous sonic world of three exceptional Swiss vocal artists. Their universe of sound extends far beyond what we would describe as singing. As they explore local and foreign traditions, the powerful mountain landscape ...
Face the Wall
2009 | 85 min | Documentary
Five people representing the more than 72,000 formerly imprisoned East German state refugees reveal the torture, cruelty, and the violations of human dignity that they endured in their daily lives. They are extraordinarily open about their struggle with the interrogation methods and the appalling conditions of imprisonment. In this sensitive documentary, which focuses closely on the eyewitnesses, the open wounds and psychological injuries that made it impossible to lead a normal, fear-free life ...
Frozen Conflict
2018 | 60 min | Documentary
One of Europe's strangest borders lies between the Republic of Moldova and the de facto autonomous region of Transnistria. The territory serves as a hostage for larger geopolitical interests: Three soldiers stand guard at this trilateral checkpoint. The factions in this conflict, Moldova, Transnistria and Russia, gather here under one roof. Not a particularly dramatic situation - rather a kind of waiting for Godot and a parable for positive coexistence of the different population groups. Starting ...
Fair Wind: Notes of a Traveller
2013 | 82 min | Documentary
The goal of FAIR WIND is to make you fall in love with the world at first sight. Bernadette Weigel travels to Bulgaria, through Romania, Ukraine, Georgia, Azerbaijan, and Kazakhstan. This essay film is not only a documentation of cultural diversity in Europe, but above all a declaration of love for the Super 8 mm film format. "Bernadette Weigel's film is equally simple in its idea, yet a refreshing masterpiece in its execution." (Daniel Sponsel - DOK Fest Munich)
The Paper Bridge
1987 | 92 min | Documentary
"A touching film full of melancholic tension." (John Bunzl, Wien Tagebuch) "I don't know exactly why I traveled east this winter," filmmaker Ruth Beckermann says of her journey through Eastern Europe. "I think I was just curious to know whether there was still any resemblance to the stories I grew up with." Beckermann's parents met in Vienna after the Holocaust; her father was a war refugee from Romania and her mother was a native of Vienna who settled in Palestine in 1938. Tracing the migratory ...