Ein Herbst im Ländchen Bärwalde

Communist East Germany at the beginning of the 1980s: The Balke family has been working the land near the town of Jueterbog for three generations. This highly unusual documentary shows their everyday lives and work. The director of the film is an international student at the East German Film Academy in Potsdam Babelsberg. Due to his unpretentious curiosity, his portrait of rural life over three generations is vivid, dense and colourful. When grandfather Gustav Balke and his wife got married in 1925, they were penniless servants. Later, they were able to rent 5 hectares of land, where they worked as independent farmers. Their son Gunter, his wife Gertrud and their two sons work as employees of the state-run agricultural cooperative (LPG). While Gustav still tilled the land with a horse-drawn hand plow, the work of the younger generations is fully mechanised. But some old habits die hard. Even though East Germany declared men and women to be equal, the vast majority of household chores fall on Gertrud Balke, on top of her work as a pig breeder.