The Big Picture

The Truth About the Frog... Is he the dream prince? As each frog climbs out of the fountain, the princess hopes it will be the one, the love of her life. But no sooner has one been flung against the wall than it turns out to be pretty much a washout. Will the frogman be able to live up to the empty promise of the frogs? … The Truth About the Frog Prince was produced by the DEFA Studio for Animation Films in Dresden, where director Sieglinde Hamacher worked for 35 years, joining soon after its founding in 1955.

Someday I'll Know A modern love story involving different affairs.

The Way Steel Was Temper... A moulder wants to live a happy life, but the circumstances in his factory are such that everyone is looking for an opportunity to grab the money before the ship sinks down to the bottom.

Homesick for Rgen or Yes... Sometimes Hannelore wishes she were a Hans, because “when a woman has to deal with a lot of men, she has to summon up a lot of strength to be heard”. The mayor of the island of Ummanz off Rügen used to be a cook. Now she represents the government and demonstrates “socialist democracy in action”. Director Róza Berger-Fiedler weaves Madam Mayor’s encounters with her constituency and discussions about the office with all its responsibilities into a sensitive portrait of a dedicated person.

She A consciously modern depiction of working women in East Germany – labourers and managers in a garment factory talk about relationships and family planning, raising children and career qualifications, women’s rights and equality in the socialist (meritocratic) society. In conversations with a doctor, the women also have a chance to voice their personal concerns, as well as their feelings about the birth control pill, a subject that caused a stir at the time.

Miss World A modern Aphrodite – how is it possible to be super sexy and successful at the same time? A career woman faces the conflicting demands of her parents, social life, and her husband. Driven by their off-camera voices to become ever more efficient, Lisa becomes a woman on the verge of a nervous breakdown. The short combines live action and animation in a film with a slapstick tenor that is a colourful, but by no means rosy depiction of the future pressures women will face in a digital working environment.

Kindness Is Contagious Kindness is Contagious profiles bleeding-edge scientists and authors from UC Berkeley, Harvard and everywhere in between as well as real life people whose lives illustrate their incredible discovery: THAT KINDNESS IS CONTAGIOUS. Learn how a little generosity can help you live a happier, healthier, wealthier, longer and more fulfilling life.

Freeman The ironic, hilarious story that interesting things can happen in the life of a person who has stopped in self-development, dreaming of only one thing - do not bear any responsibility. Forget about all obligations. Escape as a lifestyle.

Swing Hutton Swing Singer-dancer Ina Ray Hutton started out on Broadway at age 8 and performed with the big bands of Harry James and Artie Shaw, but it was as a pioneering band leader herself in the 1930s that she made her name. Hutton organized her first all-women big band, Ina Ray Hutton and her Melodears, in 1935. A few film appearances for the band and a starring role for Hutton in Ever Since Venus (1944), along with endless national touring, eventually led her to NBC and a musical variety show in 1956. In this Paramount short, one of a series directed by Fred Waller who went on to invent Cinerama, Hutton—grooving up front in her standard sheer evening dress—and the original Melodears, perform “Organ Grinder’s Swing Overture” followed by The Winstead Trio doing “The Bugle Call Rag.”

Little Devil A small provincial town. The inhabitants are bored, apathetic and bitter... Peredonov, a modest high school teacher, dreams about a promotion and moving to the capital. Gradually his dream becomes an obsession. Varvara, his second cousin who dreams about marrying him, writes a promising letter about an invitation to Saint-Petersburg on behalf of the capital's princess. But the teacher's dreams aren't meant to come true: he becomes a victim of his own insanity and kills his friend and the hateful Varvara...