Synopsis

Gabriele Stötzer and Birgit Willschütz were political inmates at Hoheneck Castle, the most notorious women’s prison in East Germany. Their story is one of overcrowded cells, despotic hierarchies, ruthless everydays, and the enduring effects of incarceration. Most of all, however, it is about the crushing pressure of forced labour. Prisoners at Hoheneck manufactured millions of pantyhose, bed sheets, and other products for West German retailers, bringing enormous profits to both sides of the Iron Curtain. Part of the young animadoc tradition, the seven-minute film pairs original audio interview extracts with abstract, monochromatic animation.

Alexander Lahl

Alexander Lahl (1979, Berlin) studied cultural sciences in Berlin, Wroclaw and Frankfurt (Oder). He works as a writer, filmmaker and producer and co-founded the media label Die Kulturingenieure. Latest work together with Max Mönch: Treibsand. A graphic novel about the last days of the GDR, published by Metrolit. Currently he is working mainly on oceans subjects.

Volker Schlecht

Volker Schlecht works as an illustrator, artist and filmmaker in Berlin. He studied communication design at the Burg Giebichenstein Kunsthochschule Halle and worked for several years as a graphic designer at Moniteurs, Berlin. After that he became an assistent teacher at the animation department of the Film University Konrad Wolf Potsdam-Babelsberg, before he changed to the Berliner Technische Kunsthochschule as lecturer, later as a professor of sequential illustration. Since March 2022 he is the professor of drawing and design foundations at the architecture department of the Hochschule Anhalt in Dessau. Together with Alexandra Kardinar he founded their collaborative label Drushba Pankow in 2002.