Thomas Heise had to wait for East Germany to collapse before he could shoot his first feature documentary film. Eisenzeit/Iron Age is a coproduction with DEFA made at a time when nobody knew what would become of the state-owned production company. The project began in 1981, when the atmosphere was not much favourable to critical art after singer and songwriter Karl Wolf Biermann had been stripped of his citizenship in 1976. This led to a witch-hunt among rebellious intellectuals and artists.

Heise wanted to portray the lives of the descendants of the founders of the first socialist model city, Eisenhüttenstadt. In the words of a survivor of the shipwreck, ‘We want to think about ourselves; we don’t want anyone else to do this job for us.’

Festivals:

• 1991 Internationales Festival für Dokumentar- und Animationsfilm Leipzig