Unter uns Film Space

In St. Jakobi church the Werkleitz Festival 2020 is presenting a selection of historical documentary films, television reports and news clips shown on monitors spread throughout the church’s interior. The films focus on changes to the Mansfeld mining industry beginning in the 1960s. One of the greatest challenges was to improve the extreme working conditions underground. Despite the exposure of new deeper copper deposits in Sangerhausen, the Mansfeld shafts were abandoned, which meant that a great number of miners had to be retrained in other fields. With the end of the East German regime, there was a great deal of public discussion around the massive environmental damage caused by copper mining. Two recent interviews will also be shown in the Unter uns Film Space. The interview with Fritz Pleitgen revolves around his travels to the Mansfeld region, from which two WDR television productions resulted – Das rote Mansfeld [Red Mansfeld] (in collaboration with Lutz Lehmann, 1981) and Das Land der Legenden – Fritz Pleitgen im “Roten Mansfeld” [The Land of Legends – Fritz Pleitgen in “Red Mansfeld”] (2005). The interview focuses on the region and its inhabitants, changes to working life and the relationship between East and West in reunified Germany. A second film shows a conversation recorded in Burgörner-Altdorf/Hettstedt between the historian Marcus Böick and Hubertus Luthardt, the founder of the workers council of MKM Mansfelder Kupfer und Messing (now KME), about the controversial history of the agency responsible for privatizing socialist enterprises, known in German as the Treuhand.