25th Anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall

Sunday marked the 25^th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall. As part of the events to mark this historic event, over 40 Trabant cars were driven along Berlin’s Bornholmer street, the first border crossing between East and West Berlin to be breached during the fall of the Wall on 9 November 1989. The well-known Trabi, a series of cars built in the German Democratic Republic before the fall of the Berlin Wall, have now become a symbol of former East Germany. Produced for nearly 30 years with almost no significant changes, over 3 million Trabants were produced in total, often remembered for their poor performance and cheap construction. However, hundreds streamed into West Germany in their Trabants after the Berlin Wall was opened, and they have since become a symbol for the fall of the Eastern Bloc. 

In 1999, ten years after the fall of the wall, American broadcaster and writer Reggie Nadelson joined formed Soviet spin doctor Vladimir Pozner in an attempt to trace the chilling and strange route of history’s most astonishing border in ‘Arena: Looking For the Iron Curtain’. Here, they visit the town of Zwickau in former East Germany and talk to Edgar Haschke, Editor of ‘Super Trabi’ magazine about his experiences of living in former East Germany and the significant of the Trabi for himself and many others

Arena: Looking For The Iron Curtain (1999), Directed by Anthony Wall, Produced by Martin Rosenbaum

The collapse of the Soviet regime should have left Stalin firmly buried in history books, denounced by Khrushchev as far back as 1956. But in his native Georgia, Stalin is far from dead – and all over the Soviet Union his legend casts a long shadow into the present. Arena’s 2001 film Stalin: Red God traces how he became the single most worshiped man in the world, tapping into the reservoir of faith left by the suppression of the Russian Orthodox Church. Here, ‘Pravda’ cartoonist Boris Yefimov discusses the phenomenon of Stalin the Red God in today’s former Soviet Union.

Arena: Stalin - Red God (2001), Directed by Frederick Baker, Series Editor - Anthony Wall