| Description |
1 online resource (streaming video file) (51 min. 9 sec.) ; 310091302 bytes |
| Summary |
To commemorate the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall on 9 November 1989, SBS presents the two part documentary, Busting the Berlin Wall.For 28 years, the Berlin Wall split a city in two and divided a nation with two million tons of concrete, 700,000 tons of steel, attack dogs, tank traps, death strips and tripwires. While the perils of the East German border kept most GDR citizens at bay, others yearned to overcome it, by digging under it, hiding in car trunks, flying over it in a hot-air balloon, and even surfing around it... From simple barbed-wire fence to sevenfold super-structure, the Wall grew over the years, becoming increasingly forbidding, perilous - and challenging to some of the GDR's more adventurous citizens. This film rebuilds the Wall with CGI and re-enacts the most daring escapes. Interviews with ex-border guards, spies, politicians, escapees and the engineers of the fiendish barrier are interspersed with archival footage, home movies and propaganda films to provide the gripping factual underpinnings of this program. In Part 1 we see the Wall go up in a clandestine operation that surprised even the Allies in West Berlin. It was a time of gut-wrenching scenes of families torn apart, of desperate East Berliners leaping from their apartment windows, of undaunted men and women digging tunnels to the Western sector. It was also the time when Berlin became a hotbed of international espionage, with Stasi, KGB, CIA, MI6 and BND all jostling for information in a city of threats and secrets. Adventures straight out of an action movie unfold in Part 2, Tear It Down: Instructions for Escapers and Survivors. We relive a couple's windsurf escape across the Baltic and the "Mission Impossible"-like feats of the Bethke brothers, who calmly flew into the GDR from the West to pick up their youngest brother. But as the GDR was planning a new, "gentler" Wall with infrared, laser, chemical and vibration detectors, U.S. President Reagan was exhorting the Soviet Union to "tear down this Wall." On 9 November 1989, after more than 1,300 people had died trying to overcome it, the Wall finally fell, and freedom was restored to a land divided for so long. (From Germany in English and German, English subtitles) (Documentary Series) (Part 1 of 2) PG CC WS |
| Event |
Broadcast 2009-11-01 at 21:30:00 |
| Notes |
Classification: PG |
| Subject |
Berlin Wall (Germany : 1961-1989)
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Cold War (1945-1989)
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Germans -- Politics and government.
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Historic sites -- Management.
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Germany -- Berlin.
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| Form |
Streaming video
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| Author |
Cronin, James E, contributor
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Engels, Wolfgang, contributor
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Halmburger, Oliver, director
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Koppen, Klaus, contributor
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Koppen, Roswitha, contributor
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Kornblum, John, contributor
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Muller, Horst, contributor
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Muller, Karl, contributor
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Muller, Rodolf, contributor
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Schroeder, Klaus, contributor
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Smith, Harold, contributor
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Sobania, Engelbert, contributor
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Solomon, Andrew, cast
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Taylor, Frederick, contributor
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