Gerhard Scheumann

The Man Who Met the Trains

A top administrator in the Federal German armed forces measures the machinery of murder at Auschwitz according to the effiency principle, and deems it a triumph. Militaria dealers market all the components for a do-it-yourself SS officer. The film assembles on, piece by piece, from a price list: the complete Hauptsturmführer for 2,921 Deutschmarks, ready to meet the trains arriving at Auschwitz with the appropriate aluminium lurex armband at 45 Marks.

Hector Cuevas

Documentary film

Amok

The desperate private war of a Vietnam veteran of the US Army. The Film explores the biggest amok run in the history of the USA at that point of time. The story of a mass murder in San Diego on July 18 1984 is told by showing reports of a local TV station. It turns out that the amok was partly caused by traumatic experiences during the Vietnam War.

The Comical Game

A card game is introduced: “Nuclear War". An entertaining, jolly card game for between two and six players, reads an ad for a game made in USA.

The Angkar

The Khmer word “angkar” signifies “organization”. The angkar of the Pol-Pot regime acted upon their own, unwritten laws. Records were discovered in the central interrogation and extermination camp “S21”, the former high school Tuol Sleng in Phnom Penh that document the death of 20.000 people.

Fly, Red Butterfly

Dialogue between children from Kampuchea who talk about their terrible experiences during the Pol Pot regime and pupils from Erfurt, Arnstadt and Plaue who participated in the solidarity action „Fly, Red Butterfly“. They speak of their contribution to the 3 307 585.90 Marks for the children of Cambodia

Phoenix

The goal of the American operation "Phoenix" in Vietnam was to destroy all the bases of the liberation struggle. K. Barton Osborn, a former "Phoenix" officer, who publicly disassociated himself from it, talks about his experiences as a CIA agent. They are confirmed by the statements of General Bui Van Nhu, the last chief of the South Vietnamese police

Die fernen Freunde nah

Report on a trip of Vietnamese guests to the GDR to attend the premiere of the documentary film „The Iron Fortress“ about the history of the Vietnam War.

At the Ditch

My Lai ten years after the massacre. Reconstruction of the crime at the place where it was committed; tracing the trail of squad leader Calley in the USA; description of what happened by people who were believed to be dead.

The Dead Are Not Silent

Moy de Tohá and Isabel Letelier tell their story. They are the widows of two Defence Ministers of the Unidad Popular, who knew too much.

The Iron Fortress

Weeks after the victory in Vietnam, first pictures of a new humanity are captured: old and sick people preparing for their future, children on their way to school.

I Sincerely Repent

Interviews with former generals of the South Vietnamese Army in the Quang Trung re-education camp, shortly after the end of the Vietnam War.

And Then the First Rice

Stories from the first summer after the end of the war in Vietnam

One Minute of Darkness Does Not Blind Us

This documentary deals with the coup d'état of general Pinochet in Chile 1975 and its immediate aftermath: the harsh repression of left-wing intellectuals, artist and workers.

Geldsorgen

Short film about General Eduardo Cano, who after the military coup became director of the Chilean central bank in the Pinochet dictatorship. Cano withdraws money from the circulation, which were described by opposition parties with resistance piles. From the Chile cycle by Walter Heynowski and Gerhard Scheumann.

Meier's Legacy

An auction in Munich, 1974, old man with crockery and knick-knacks labelled "Former property of Hermann Göring": relics of Nazism sold to the benefit of the post-war state: the west criticised by the east.

The White Coup

At the parliamentary elections that the Unidad Popular won, there were activities to overthrow Salvador Allende. By a white, supposedly clean coup, the rightwing powers of Chile tried unsuccessfully to gain a two thirds majority in the national congress. Months later, the armed, violent coup took place.

I Was, I Am, I Will Be

In the spring of 1974, a camera team from Studio H&S succeeded against the explicit orders of the Junta’s Chancellery, entered into two large concentration camps in the north of the country - Chacabuco and Pisagua - leaving with filmed sequences and sound recordings.

The War of the Mummies

The country is portrayed before and after the storm of the military to the government palace “La Moneda” when Salvador Allende is killed and the directors discover the implications of American companies that were involved in the political developments.

Remington Cal. 12

This bullet is stamped with the inscription 'Remington Peters 12' and yet is not mentioned in Remington's catalogue. It consists of 20 small steel arrows.

Bye-Bye Wheelus

Wheelus Air Base was once the largest American air base outside the USA itself. Ordered to be cleared by June 30th, 1970 by Libya’s Revolutionary Command Council.

The Man Without a Past

Horst Rudolf Überlacker is a young lawyer at the beginning of a promising career. At the end of the Second World War he was nine years old, but his present statements can be considered "agitation threatening peace". The Spokesman of the Sudeten German Association, Dr. Becher lauds "the young political talent" who performs the generational change from old Fascists to neo-Nazis.

The President in Exile

The President Dr. Walter Becher, officially the spokesman for the Sudeten German Homeland Association, called out the old flags, as he does every year.

Mit vorzüglicher Hochachtung

At a Bach concert, a letter is read aloud in which the legation council of the Federal Republic of Germany tries to poach the musicians of the Gewandhaus Orchestra in Nicosia.

Grüße von Ost nach West

Documentary film

Ehrenmänner

In two chapters the film shows men in divided Germany willing to leave their country. In the first chapter, East-Germans are shown who leave their wives and children behind in order to live in the Federal Republic of Germany. In the second chapter, unmarried West-Germans try to move to the German Democratic Republic.

Hint from a Neighbor

A polemical report. "Way to the neighbors" is the motto of the Oberhausen Short Film Festival. In their "Remarks on the Oberhausen 66 Film Festival," the GDR documentarians Gerhard Scheumann and Walter Heynowski take the competition selection to task: They see formal experiments as "excesses on the big screen" and instead of political themes, they discover a "surge of perversity." After her own film "Kommando 52" was rejected by the festival, a criminal complaint by the GDR lawyer Friedrich-Karl Kaul against the mercenary and commander "Kongo-Müller" is the focus of a press conference. The refusal of a cinema owner to show the film was a "hint from the neighbors", the neighboring public order office, and therefore state censorship in the Federal Republic of Germany.

O.K.

In a reception camp for ethnic Germans in Eisenach, the director gets to know the girl Doris S. who went to West Germany and came back. This film interview tells the story of her individual fate in a divided Germany.