With a tumultuous stream of images culled from the East German state film archives, this 1992 film by Wolfgang Kissel and C. Cay Wesnigk offers an enlightening history of East Germany. The film assembles clips from over 40 years, displaying the unsettling and sometimes absurd ways that advertisements, newsreels, and educational materials were manipulated by the vast propaganda machine. A housewife sets down dinner for her children; young Aryan boys run in file; a miner celebrates a record haul of coal. Far from desensitizing the viewer, the barrage of official images produces a mounting sense of dismay—the longer the film plays on, the more appalled (and fascinated) we become. With no narration and with original sound that somehow makes the agitprop all the more uncomfortable to watch, these vignettes are ultimately hoist with their own petards.  ST