Das Bergwerk – Franz Fühmann (1998)

This richly detailed film essay is a portrait of one of the GDR's most versatile writers and children's book authors, Franz Fühmann (1922–1984). It focuses on the author's last decade and his mammoth project, "Im Berg", which was intended to be his magnum opus. Fühmann's early death left the book, with its 129 pages of text and 20 pages of supplementary material, unfinished. Already marked by death, he wrote beneath the typescript: "Report of a Failure. Fragment." Director Karlheinz Mund takes up this idea, tracing Fühmann's life through interviews, images of work underground, and excerpts from his texts.