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The Lasting Formation

Director: Christian Bäucker
89 min, Deutschland 2021
Language: German with Engl. subtitles
5r Filmproduktion

A school in deep sleep. “We wanted to move forward, to better ourselves … Punctuality, honesty, reliability. Those were our educational goals,” the school’s headmaster recalls.
The filmmaker [Christian Bäucker] slowly feels his way forward. On a shelf sits the novel The Mother by Maxim Gorky. A pupil reads out excerpts from an old essay. A teacher recites Wilhelm Busch’s fable Bewaffneter Friede [Armed Peace] and we learn about the story of Lilo Herrmann, a communist resistance fighter against the Nazis. In this film questions were asked openly and frankly. The film manages to present a differentiated picture of the GDR school system, juxtaposing educational mission and indoctrination. This is a film that would not have been possible 10 years ago.
— Ina Borrmann (DOK.fest 2021)

How does one become
an “all-round educated
socialist personality”?