Ein Herbst im Ländchen Bärwalde

Roughly 100 kilometres from the Polish border lies the German hamlet of Bärwalde. In the early 1980s, Gautam Bora, an international student at the University of Film and Television in Babelsberg (HFF), made the region his subject for Ein Herbst im Ländchen Bärwalde, capturing a precise moment in its annual farming season.
Stylistically, the film adheres to the HFF’s then-established commitment to social realist documentary, portraying daily life in East Germany in a television-friendly style guided by an admirable clarity of vision. Bora and cinematographer Marwan Salamah’s attention to detail also adds a subtle, indelible sense of the poetic. Throughout we see images of hands, tools, fabrics or the specific crops that have received care for the previous several months, each quietly communicating as much about life and labour as the first-person interviews they appear alongside. Such directorial sensitivity is equally seen in the space the film offers to not only the men but also the women, working with equal dedication inside the home or the adjacent barnyards.