What were they seeing while watching? Operative films from the Stasi Mediathek
Surveillance: Secret Police Film Festival 5.
New York-i Nyílt Társadalom Intézet / Open Society Foundations, New York
Goethe-Institut Budapest
The fifth event of the retrospective film program “Surveillance: Secret Police Film Festival”, which includes an international selection of training films, newsreels and operative films produced by Communist Secret Police 1962–1989.
West-Berlin Spy Road Movie / Kamerafahrt mit einem PKW durch West-Berlin (operative film)
This film is exclusively composed of images of important sights and streets in West-Berlin, filmed by Stasi employees’ Super8 mm camera. The film could have been used to introduce the sights and main streets to DDR agents before their deployment in West Berlin.
DDR, German with English subtitles, 1970, 89 min, 12 min excerpt
Border Zone at Berlin-Kreuzberg / Filmaufnahmen der Grenzanlagen in Berlin-Kreuzberg (operative film)
This film shows East German and West-German civilians moving within the close vicinity of the border zone fence and checkpoint.
DDR, German with English subtitles, 1962, 11 min, silent (music added by OSA)
Surveillance of a West-German Citizen in Flemmingen in Naumburg / Beobachtung eines BRD-Bürgers in Flemmingen bei Naumburg (operative film)
As the microphones of the VHS cameras used for surveillance were not switched off, the comments and conversations between the two Stasi agents were accidentally recorded thus leaving a unique source of information about what the observers were thinking about their subjects.
DDR, German with English subtitles, 1989, 13 min
I Love You All / Aus Liebe Zum Volk (documentary)
Relieved of his duties and purpose with the closing of the Stasi in 1990, “Mr B.” delivers an account of twenty years of his life within the organization, supported by never-before-seen Stasi archive footage.
dir. Eyal Sivan, Germany & France, German with English subtitles, 2004, 88min
The program is in English.