Spur der Steine (35mm)

In the organizer's words:

Director: Frank Beyer | GDR 1966 | 139 min | 35mm | German original version | with Manfred Krug, Krystyna Stypułkowska, Eberhard Esche

Spur der Steine by Frank Beyer is one of the most important, but also most controversial films of the DEFA. It tells the story of the headstrong foreman Hannes Balla (Manfred Krug), who uses unconventional methods to manage a large construction site and is at war with authority. The arrival of the young party secretary Kati Klee and the engineer Werner Horrath brings unrest to the well-established structure. Not only professionally, but also privately. Between the three characters, a tension arises between power, morality and personal responsibility. Based on the novel of the same name by Erik Neutsch, the film not only tells of the construction of a socialist building project, but above all of the clash of different lifestyles, convictions and power structures in the GDR of the 1960s. The film criticizes grievances in everyday life in the GDR and shows a complex, realistic view of life that was, however, too realistic for the party leadership. After only a few screenings, Spur der Steine was banned and disappeared into the archives until 1990. Today it is considered a milestone of GDR cinema: courageous, multi-layered and timelessly topical.

Loan of the film print with the kind support of the HfG Karlsruhe.

Supporting film: The Treasure of Priam
Director: Christian Haardt | Germany 2014 | 9 min | HD Video | Without dialog

Christian Haardt weaves a new story from ancient HfG archive material that flickers by like a dream - pure imagination! Did you know: Christian Haardt's Vordiplom was not actually intended as a film - but as an installation! The film material was running on the editing table: an experimental film edited together from copies of students' works found in the film archive, which weaves together a wide variety of stories to create a universal story. This is the first time we have been able to show the film. Thank you for that!

We are very pleased that the filmmaker will be present in person on this evening. He will briefly introduce his film and say a few words about it.

Loan of the film print with the kind support of the HfG Karlsruhe.

Free admission | donation requested

Click here for the screening:
https://kinoimblauensalon.de/de/events/spur-der-steine-2025-11-14

Price information:

Free admission | Donation requested