Memories of a Landscape - For Manuela

The destruction of two Saxon villages for open-cast lignite mining is portrayed over a period of three years. This GDR documentary film proves to be bitterly topical.

Kurt Tetzlaff's documentary film calls on allegories about the loss of homeland and the destruction of nature in the name of industrial progress. Villages that stand in the way of lignite mining are demolished. People are resettled against their will. In his 1983 film, Tetzlaff follows the lives of some of the villagers south of Leipzig over several years. He shows the people's painful departure from their familiar places, which will no longer exist. The felling of the old oak tree becomes a metaphor for the destruction of their roots. But the film also recounts the recultivation of destroyed cultural landscapes and the birth of Manuela as a symbol of a new beginning.

Image © DEFA Stiftung