about

film attempt, berlin(east), 1979, stephan konopatzky, zs0106_m003

From his own home movie collection of all formats, Stephan Konopatzky has founded the Berlin-based company in 2019. It is dedicated to the "private view" of past times captured on celluloid. Home movies of people, city and country, work, partys, demonstrations, parades, speeches... gives you insights into life "in past times". It is an unbiased view at the exciting history of the short 20th century from an often surprising perspective. The archive holdings currently contain over three thousand home movies, tens of thousands slides and some sound recordings. The archived home movies are mostly from Germany, but not limited to it. They were made between the late 1920s and the early 1990s.

I have long been involved with analog heritage from the 1945-1990 period, with a focus on cine film, slides and sound. My interest in these media and the period probably lies in my biography. Already as a child I was fascinated by recording devices of all kinds and the resulting recordings. This ranged from photography to filming to sound recordings, I tried everything. I grew up in the GDR (East Berlin) and was "politicized" early by my parents and siblings (thank you!). Long before the fall of the Berlin Wall, this led me to become particularly aware of the strange conditions in the GDR, but also of the East-West relationship. Problems with the state and the Stasi, the support of opposition groups brought me to the "Stasi dissolution" during the Wende. In 1991, I got myself a job in the Stasi archives, which are now part of the Federal Archives, and became an archivist. But my interest in the past did not let me go even after work and my private media collection grew steadily. So I shortened my time at the Federal Archive and devoted myself to building up zeitstreifen...

stephan konopatzky