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Hilmar Thate

Actor
Hilmar Thate was a prominent German actor known for his work both on stage and in film, particularly during the mid to late 20th century. Born in 1931, Thate began his career in East Germany, where he became part of the Berliner Ensemble, a theater company associated with Bertolt Brecht. He gained significant recognition for his commanding presence and strong performances in various leading roles. Thate transitioned to film and television, where he delivered notable performances in movies such as "Carla" (1965) and "Die Verrohung des Franz Blum" (1974). One of his most acclaimed roles was in the 1986 film "Der Aufenthalt," directed by Frank Beyer, where he played a morally complex character that showcased his versatility and depth as an actor. In terms of awards, Hilmar Thate received the prestigious Deutscher Filmpreis (German Film Award) for Best Actor for his role in "Der Aufenthalt." Throughout his career, he continued to work in both film and theater, leaving a lasting impact on German cinema and performing arts. Thate passed away in 2016, but his contributions to acting remain influential.

Films

Paths in the Night

Paths in the Night

By Andreas Kleinert

1999 | 93 min | Drama

A haunting psychogram of an entire generation of ex-GDR citizens who have not yet fully accepted that they now live in the Federal Republic of Germany

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Sag mir, wo du stehst

Sag mir, wo du stehst

2011 | 30 min | Documentary

Arrested, interrogated, persecuted, suppressed. At the Hohenschönhausen Memorial in Berlin, eyewitnesses recall the Stasi methods used during arrest. All of them remain traumatized. Their accusations are directed at the former SED regime. Conversely, former Stasi employees deny that any injustice occurred. In the film, both sides confront each other. A battle for the interpretation of the past begins. Personal memories, however, show that history has many facets. But it is the dialogue between victims ...

The GDR Complex

The GDR Complex

2016 | 90 min | Documentary

Young, gay, and conservative, Mario Roellig is a witnesses to the atrocities committed in the GDR. He guides groups through the Stasi prison where he was once incarcerated. A love affair with a politician from West-Berlin made him try to flee to the West, but he got unlucky and was detained at the famous Stasi prison Berlin Hohenschoenhausen. Today Roellig confronts GDR aficionados and is also confronted by people who still believe in social utopias. And he tries to overcome his hurt feelings: ...

Raju

Raju

2010 | 23 min | Drama

In this Oscar nominated short, a German couple, played by Wotan Wilke Möhring and Julia Richter, adopts an Indian orphan in Kolkata. On their way to the hotel, the boy disappears. The German officials have recommended a local Indian orphanage to them. There the four-year-old boy Raju, who comes from a slum, is introduced to them and handed over. When the boy suddenly disappears and the Indian police cannot get any further with their investigations, Jan himself starts an intensive search.

The painter of the strange country …

The painter of the strange country …

1988 | 42 min | Icons & Media Art

Three artists who moved from East Germany to West Berlin in the mid-1980s are the focus of this documentary. Cornelia Schleime, Hans-Hendrik Grimmling and Hans Scheib were part of the alternative art scene in East Germany and resisted state dictates. But what did the change to a new social system mean for their artistic identity? How did their strategies and perspectives change in the West, where market mechanisms and a different culture of self-staging suddenly prevailed? In THE PAINTER CAME FROM ...

The Family

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 ...

Mit dem Wort Wende

Mit dem Wort Wende

2009 | 3 min | Shorts

Filmmaker Juliane Henrich explores the term "Wende" (course change) by means of a speech by Christa Wolf, which she gave shortly before the fall of the Berlin Wall at the Alexanderplatz in Berlin. A time-lapse recording of the Berlin television tower is intertwined with fragments of Wolf's speech on 04.11.1989. The writer called into question the term "Wende", which today is synonymous with the peaceful revolution of 1989, but it was actually SED Secretary General Egon Krenz who first spoke of a ...

Afternoon

Afternoon

2007 | 95 min | Drama

Konstantin is an unsuccessful writer, his mother is a narcissistic actress, his uncle is dying and shows no interest in his surroundings. The web of relationships between them, marked by speechlessness and inspired by Chekhov's "The Seagull," gradually unravels until blood ultimately flows. "Angela Schanelec is an auteur filmmaker par excellence, a filmmaker who likes to deliberately subvert audience expectations and subjects her works almost exclusively to rules she has set herself. Afternoon ...

Duerer’s Heirs

Duerer’s Heirs

1996 | 58 min | Documentary

"It cannot be said more coarsely and more precisely: in the GDR, German painting is more German…" was the opinion of the writer Günter Grass at the beginning of the 1980s. The fall of the Wall in 1989 made it possible to take a closer look at this ‘German’ painting of the faded GDR. At the centre of the film is a group picture. The picture was taken in the early 1960s in Leipzig, a field of experimentation and testing for a 'new German realism' under socialist conditions. What connects the founders ...

GDR Experimental: First Leipzig Autumn Salon

GDR Experimental: First Leipzig Autumn Salon

2006 | 22 min | Icons & Media Art

In 1984, the artists Lutz Dammbeck, Günter Firit, Hans Hendrik Grimmling, Frieder Heinze, Günter Huniat and Olaf Wegewitz occupied a trade fair building in the center of Leipzig to stage one of the first independent and public exhibitions in the GDR – the 1st LEIPZIGER HERBSTSALON. The event was an act of resistance against the GDR's system of state control and a creative form of self-assertion. The artists defied the restrictive guidelines of cultural policy and created an autonomous space for avant-garde, ...

Borders

Borders

2008 | 20 min | Shorts

In this award-winning newcomer film, a woman returns to her hometown in the former GDR, from where she fled with her family and is overcome by dark visions of a haunting past. Christine Wernke's graduation film from the International Film School Cologne received the Young Talent Award at the Grenzland Filmtage Selb and was shown at the Karlovy Vary Fresh Film Festival. Dana returns to her hometown at the Baltic Sea. Twenty years ago, she and her family feld East Germany by boat. The escape failed ...