“The Burning Wall” at Film Forum, Through December 3rd

by Thomas Beller

11/26/2001

206 West Houston St, ny

Neighborhood: Manhattan

This documentary film is worth seeing on the grounds that:

a) It’s an intense, enthralling movie and I think you’ll enjoy it.

b) The story of a state becoming obsessed with the enemy within has some resonance in our current political climate.

c) The film maker is my mother.

  • “In much the same way helmer Hava Kohav Beller’s Oscar-nommed 1992 documentary, ‘The Restless Conscience,’ cogently charted resistance to the Nazis between 1933 and 1945, her second, ‘The Burning Wall,’ is a focused and fascinating history of dissidence in the German Democratic Republic — known to the Cold War-era world as East Germany.”
    Eddie Cockrell, Variety
  • “Riveting!”
    Jack Matthews, The Daily News
  • “Absorbing, unflinching look at dissent and repression in East Germany between 1949 and 1989 makes a strong case that much of the opposition in the former Soviet-bloc country came from former idealists disillusioned by the grim reality of socialism. Impressively detailed film doesn’t try to dumb anything down, making it a must for history buffs.” (1 hr. 56 mins.; NR)
    BILGE EBIRI, New York Magazine

THE BURNING WALL WEBSITE

Film Forum

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