Goethe on Demand

Berlin, Hamburg, Munich, Cologne—what lies outside Germany’s metropolises? “City, Country, River—A Cinematic Journey Across Germany” is a new yearlong Goethe on Demand series exploring everyday realities in underrepresented parts of Germany, with a new film offered every month.
Start Streaming Kurt Tetzlaff’s 1983 documentary Memories of a Landscape—For Manuela chronicles the destruction of two East German villages for opencast coal mining over a period of three years. Local residents are resettled against their will in the name of industrial progress in the communist state. The removal of an old oak tree becomes a metaphor for the destruction of the community’s roots. But the film also recounts the recultivation of destroyed landscapes, with Manuela’s birth as a new beginning.

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Erinnerung an eine Landschaft – Für Manuela
Dir. Kurt Tetzlaff
East Germany, 1983
84 min.