Protecting films made in East Germany while time permits

You can smell what time does to film the moment an old metal can is opened. Vinegar. And the smell of vinegar is never a good sign.

That’s when it’s time for the washing machine.

The specialized restoration device gently cleans old film reels, removing dust, residue and chemical build-up before they are scanned and digitized.

Studio manager Ralf Jesse and his team bought such a machine, which dates from the 1980s, in Hollywood. Now it is helping to save old films from the German Democratic Republic (GDR), the former East Germany.

Founded 80 years ago, DEFA was the state-owned film studio of the once-communist East Germany.

It made many well-loved films, with one of the best-known "Three Hazelnuts for Cinderella," a classic fairy tale still shown at Christmas time.

Other legendary hits include "The Murderers Are Among Us," starring actress Hildegard Knef; "Solo Sunny" and "The Legend of Paul and Paula."

Abroad, the best-known East German film internationally is "Jakob der Lügner" (Jacob the Liar, 1974), directed by Frank Beyer. Others include "Goya," "Stars" and "Somewhere in Berlin."

"Jacob the Liar" achieved global acclaim as the only film produced by the East German DEFA studios to ever be nominated for an Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film.

Many, many more films were made: Some 700 feature films, 900 animated films and 2,000 documentaries were produced before reunification.

Stefanie Eckert heads the DEFA Foundation, which is now managing the film heritage from that era.

The films are stored in Germany's Federal Archives but not all have yet been digitized and the clock is ticking.

"The films simply won’t last another 100 years," says Eckert, citing acetic acid syndrome as an example.

Even with the best storage conditions, signs of decomposition are evident. "You can try to halt that," she says. "But it’s better to try to digitize them in a sustainable way."

But that costs money.

In south Berlin, in an unassuming building in the district of Marienfelde, another film is currently being preserved for posterity.

Old film reels are delivered in metal tins, checked by experts, carefully cleaned in a film washing machine and scanned. The equipment in the room looks like an episode of "Star Trek."

Actress Katharina Thalbach was still very young in "The Sorrows of Young Werther." Now the 1976 film is being digitized at the Eurotape studio.

On screens, the images are carefully colour-corrected and scratches, for example, are removed. Studio manager Jesse and his team explain the individual steps in detail.

Digitizing a film costs several tens of thousands of dollars, says Eckert. Since 2019, they have benefited, along with other institutions, from the Film Heritage funding programme, for which €10 million were earmarked annually.

Since then though the funds have been roughly halved and it is unclear what will happen after 2028. That is when the programme expires.

"A race against time"

Together with other organizations, they are appealing to politicians to continue the funding programme. "Film heritage is an indispensable part of our cultural memory and a mirror of German history," reads an appeal to Minister of State for Culture Wolfram Weimer, the federal states and the German Federal Film Board (FFA).

"Preserving these valuable collections is a race against time and the physical deterioration of the material," the letter states. Films that are no longer watched and no longer discussed are a "dead heritage."

Only a small fraction of Germany’s film heritage has been digitized, says Eckert. For DEFA feature films, the figure is now almost half.

The foundation continues to receive requests for films from around the world, including as far away as Chile.

The remarkable completeness of the GDR film archive — preserved in the Federal Archives rather than scattered across collections worldwide — is largely thanks to East Germany’s mandatory film deposit law, which required all film material to be centrally archived.

To this day, DEFA films are shown on television. Eckert also hopes they can be watched at the cinema. At Berlin’s Kino International – the former premiere cinema of the GDR – for instance, films are set to screen regularly during the anniversary year, as DEFA was founded on 17 May 1946.

"We also work with platforms such as YouTube and other streaming platforms," says Eckert. The Filmfriend library platform shows some of their films, and the foundation also runs the Defa TV channel, which Germans can access through smart TVs.

Licensing revenue helps fund further restoration projects. With current support, the foundation can digitize around 20 to 30 films a year, Eckert says. Without the Film Heritage programme, that number would fall to just one or two annually.

And in the meantime, the reels continue to age.

The smell of vinegar has never seemed so ominous.