DVD #2 – 6 Student Films by Andreas Dresen:
Consequences, Peter 25 Years Old (1987)

What Every Man Must Do (1988)

The Rats Sleep at Night (1988)

Far from Klein Wanzleben (1989)

Train in the Distance (1989)

Shortcut to Istanbul (1990)

Running Time: 140 minutes

Synopsis:
A young, naive and enthusiastic theater director named Kai comes to a grim provincial town to put on Beckett’s Waiting for Godot. Although the lethargic theater company shows no interest in the play, his spirit remains undaunted.Meanwhile, it is fall 1989. The world is changing and somewhere, far away in the capital, a revolution is taking place and it seems that wishes might come true. Great hopes emerge in the little town and unexpected events overtake Kai’s mutating production. Silent Country, Dresen’s first feature film, is not without humor and is one of the most articulate films made about the reunification.

The film took the International Film Festival in Berlin by surprise and received both the Hesse Film Award and the German Critics’ Award in 1993.

Press Comments:
". . . a tragicomedy, the most beautiful and precise film there is about the turning point in East Germany." - Film historian Ralf Schenk

Dresen's film is remarkable because it brilliantly reenacts the events of 1989 from the point of view of those who were most affected by them: the East Germans. It does so with refreshing modernism—the story structure of the film bears similarities to Fellini's 8 1/2 and to Buñuel's The Discrete Charm of the Bourgeoisie. However, Dresen grounds the aporia of his artist/protagonist in the concrete political and social situation of the GDR. His film—technically sophisticated and graced with excellent acting—conveys a picture of the East with an immediacy that no West German director has achieved. - Inez Hedges, Jump Cut

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Architects, The	Changing Skins	That Was the Wild East: Film Culture, Unification, and the "New" Germany