Last Year Titanic

In October 1989, the part of the West Berlin borough of Kreuzberg called SO 36, had been largely shut off by the Wall from the rest of the city for 28 years. A lethargic sub-culture of students, artists, bohemians and barflys had flourished among crumbling buildings. Part of that microcosm is barkeeper Frank, semi-formally called 'Herr Lehmann' by friends and patrons. He hangs out drinking, sports utter disregard for anything beyond SO 36 and lazily pursues an affair with cook Katrin. His lifestyle is gradually disturbed, when his parents show up for a visit, things go awry with Katrin and his best friend Karl starts to act strange. Meanwhile, political turmoil mounts on the other side of the Wall.

Two families attempt a daredevil plan to escape the GDR with a homemade hot air balloon, but it crashes just before the border. The Stasi finds traces of this attempt to escape and immediately starts investigations, while the two families are forced to build a new escape balloon. With each passing day the Stasi is closer on their heels – a nerve-wracking race against time begins.

Berlin is a place that is indispensable to the imagination, a city where history ticks all the boxes. The longest of all the helter-skelter rides that Berliners have taken through the playground of history ended in 1989 when the Berlin Wall shattered into a million souvenirs. Hundreds of people, mainly young, were killed there trying to escape to the West. The people who built the Wall thought they were building a brave new socialist world. But their dream turned into a nightmare as over time the Wall poisoned, corrupted and brutalized the little world it encircled. In The Secret Life of the Berlin Wall, the dreams and nightmares come dramatically back to life as the spies, informers, double agents and interrogators of Cold War Berlin weave their nervy spells of double lives and double dealing.

13 August 1961: the GDR closes the sector borders in Berlin. The city is divided overnight. Escape to the West becomes more dangerous every day. But on September 14, 1962, exactly one year, one month and one day after the Wall was built, a group of 29 people from the GDR managed to escape spectacularly through a 135-meter tunnel to the West. For more than 4 months, students from West Berlin, including 2 Italians, dug this tunnel. When the tunnel builders ran out of money after only a few meters of digging, they came up with the idea of marketing the escape tunnel. They sell the film rights to the story exclusively to NBC, an American television station.

In 1989, thirteen GDR scientists and technicians set off from East Berlin to the Georg Forster research station in the Antarctic. During their expedition the Berlin Wall fell on November 9th. Cut off from the images that go around the world, the men can only experience the historical events passively. When they returned in the spring of 1991, their homeland was a foreign country. The documentary reconstructs the thoughts and feelings of the East German researchers on the basis of eyewitness accounts, diary excerpts, letters, film material, grandiose landscape shots from the location of the action and unique photos to make the consequences of the events tens of thousands of kilometers away on the small GDR expedition in the middle of the eternal ice tangible.

25 years after the reunion between East and West Germany, this movie shows pictures from different perspectives of people and country, during a glide flight above the metropolis. Which visions and dreams marked this region? What changed and what emerged from the city’s contentious history? We take a look from above to see the city and its citizens.

An ideological and physical barrier fell on 9 November 1989 in Berlin. For 28 years, this 155 km wall divided Germany in two, separating friends and family. The recent discovery of some documents reveals the stories of those who managed to escape to join their loved ones, or simply to regain their freedom. Demonstrating imagination and courage, some dug tunnels to get under the Berlin Wall, others inflated balloons to fly over it, while others disguised themselves with fake uniforms. By combining archives, reconstitution sequences and intrigue scenes, this documentary plunges us into a Berlin that has now disappeared, through the prism of the art of escape under the GDR.

The Berlin Wall came down in 1989, bringing the reunification of Germany and an end to the Cold War. This documentary revisits the events surrounding the wall's historic collapse. Interviews with George Bush, Mikhail Gorbachev and Helmut Kohl offer insight into political maneuvering while firsthand accounts from Germans provide personal perspectives of this historic event that changed the world forever.

August 13, 1961: The passengers on the interzonal train from Munich to East Berlin learn 3½ hours before crossing the border that the Wall is being built in Berlin. They have 3½ hours to make a life-changing decision: to get off the train or keep going.

It's the summer of 1990, two teenagers in Germany fall in love - an innocent first love, shortly before the German reunification. Katja (16) is from West-Berlin, Thorben (17) from GDR. Their families are fighting over a house in Kleinmachnow (a suburb of East-Berlin), where Thorbens family has been living since the 70ies, but where Katjas father grew up. The family had to emigrate to West-Berlin in 1961, just before the Berlin Wall was built. Later, the house was dispossessed under GDR-rule. Now, Katjas father demands restitution. The conflict grows bitterer and threatens to tear apart both families. It is about old wounds and new prejudices. While being in the middle of Germanys swiftly progressing process of reunification, Katja and Thorben have to fight for their love.

Germany 1982: The country is divided into two parts. Nele, coming from West-Germany, travels to East-Germany where she meets Captain, singer of a band. They fall in love with each other, but the regime "takes care" of their relationship, meaning: They can not see each other again. Germany 1990: The country is reunited. Nele starts searching their lost love...

When Martin, a former GDR citizen, is released from jail, he lately becomes confronted with the consequences of the German re-unification.

Berlin, 1932. The Weimar Republic is torn apart in the struggle between right- and left-wing extremists and Berlin is a powder keg. Nightclub singer Henny Dalgow get to know the Social Democratic congressman and Jewish doctor Albert Goldman, and the two become a slightly odd couple. Albert is a sworn pacifist after his experiences in the First World War. Contrary to his beliefs he agrees to act as courier for his brother Edwin, who belongs to a radical communist cell.

Futuristic view of life in Pankow, East Berlin. What if the reunion never happened? GDR has turned into a madhouse with serious economic problems.

In 1986, Anna from West Germany and the GDR citizen Philipp meet at a church youth exchange in East Berlin. It's love at first sight. But it is also an impossible love, because between them stands the wall.

In late 1920s Berlin, Franz Biberkopf is released from prison and vows to go straight. However, he soon finds himself embroiled in the city’s criminal underworld.

The relationship between Germans and Austrians is illuminated in a satirical and tragicomic way. The main characters of the series are the members of the German Family Sattmann, who have been spending their holidays for years in the fictional village of Lahnenberg in the Tyrolean Zillertal. The story begins with real excerpts from the TV show "Let's Go!" Asked by Fuchsberger, Austrian candidates explain that the Piefkes are the imaginary Germans who threw their marks around them and believed that something was better. The outrage among German tourists is great, especially among the Berlin business family Sattmann. The Tyroleans are doing everything they can to contain the threat of a stornowelle of German tourists (which in reality also existed).

The mini-series follows the construction and history of the famous Adlon hotel in Berlin, as seen through the eyes of Sonja Schadt, the youngest member of the wealthy fictional Schadt family who are friends with the Adlons.

Beneath the decadence of 1929 Berlin, lies an underworld city of sin. Police investigator Gareon Rath has been transferred from Cologne to the epicenter of political and social changes in the Golden Twenties.

At the Berlin dance school "Galant," worlds collide and the struggle between prudishness and emancipation is carried out. The proprietor of the dance school, Caterina Schöllack, has three daughters whom she orders to integrate into this hierarchically structured society. Two of her daughters seem to abide by their mother's wish. Only Monika, the middle daughter, rejects the given path and discovers rock 'n' roll for herself.

In this unique take on British history, Professor Alice Roberts explores Britain's rich and varied past through the stories of individual towns and cities. In each programme Alice studies one key period in history by delving into the secrets of a historic town that encapsulates the era, providing an accurate impression of what life was really like at key moments in our turbulent past. At the climax of each programme, cutting-edge CGI reveals the entire historic town in all its former glory.

Zeinab Badawi delves into the history of Africa for a brand new, eight-part series on BBC World News. The continent of Africa has a long, complex history, and its people built civilizations which rivalled those which existed anywhere else in the world. However, much of the continent's history is not widely known, and the little that is known often projects a distorted, partial picture. Sudan-born Zeinab travels to all four corners of Africa, interviewing historians, archaeologists, and citizens whose stories paint a vivid picture of their continent's past and how it informs their present lives.

The intersecting stories of several different people of widely diverging ages and backgrounds. From STASI offspring to Oakland anarchists, the characters' landscapes are as varied as East Berlin, the Bolivian jungle, East Harlem walk-ups, and the California Redwoods. Based on the novel of the same name by Jonathan Franzen.

In a politically, morally and economically destroyed country, three sisters of an industrialist family in post-war Germany reinvent themselves and set the course for their future.

The further life of the protagonist Caterina Schöllack and her three daughters will be traced, who fight in the restrictive period of the 1950s for emancipation and the realization of their own dreams. Monika, Helga and Eva have grown up and each seeks their way to find their way in the rigid society of the late 1950s. Monika and Freddy have a career in show business, and mother Caterina acts as a manager. Meanwhile, Helga works hard to be the perfect housewife and mother for Monika's daughter Dorli. Eva, however, quarrels with her life as a professor's wife.

The movie consist of 13 separate episodes each handling a period between 1960 and 1970. It tells the story of a group of people in Munich (mostly music and film students). The movie tells a story in many different levels about love, friendship, misfortune, loss, art, politics, history with important historic events of the decennium in the background.

During a robbery at KaDeWe, of all places, a magical encounter occurs between Hedi, a saleswoman in the textile department, and Fritzi, the daughter of KaDeWe owner Adolf Jandorf. It is love at first sight: Against all social and family odds, the two disparate young women begin a passionate relationship. At the same time, Fritzi's older brother and war returnee Harry is fighting for his father's recognition as the new junior manager of KaDeWe - and against his own despair. At Harry's side is Georg, a general manager placed in front of him by his father, who has worked his way up from a poor background to the top echelons of KaDeWe. Georg, of all people, will play a decisive role in the future fate of the department store...

The village Schabbach experiences Germany's triumphs and tragedies from 1989 to 2000.

The Journal Editorial Report is a weekly American interview and panel discussion TV program on Fox News Channel, hosted by Paul Gigot, editorial page editor of The Wall Street Journal. Prior to moving to Fox News, the show aired on PBS for 15 months, ending on December 2, 2005. Opening with a newsmaker of the week, Gigot usually interviews a guest for the first half of the program, asking questions related to the writings of the guest or a current event of interest to the guest. Following the guest segment, the program becomes a panel discussion of Wall Street Journal editorial writers giving their opinions on the political, economic, and cultural issues of the current week. The final segment labeled Hits and Misses lets the panelists comment on the best and worst stories or events of the week. The program is broadcast Saturdays at 2:00 p.m. and 11:00 p.m. and Sundays at 6:00 a.m. The transcript of each show appears on OpinionJournal.com on the following Monday. The political point of view of the panel is primarily libertarian, reflecting the "free markets and free people" philosophy of the editorial page of the Wall Street Journal.