and with me here is alberto herskovitz one of the initiators of our project open memory box welcome to the show thank you now we hear a lot of people from east germany say yes it was a dictatorship but it wasn't all bad is that part of what this project is trying to show. it's no i would say that we have and this project has not the. another go any different than this is private life they did life in east germany something that many many people. didn't know and know very little about ok so it's neither good nor bad necessarily well. we never thought this project to do intend to balance any good or bad in what was a dictatorship in east germany we of course know that there was a lot of a lot of problems of injustice a lot of oppression but at the same time people who are living in this country and older who are no more victims or. are perpetrating the protest is their only ok so that you're bringing it back to the personal and you have footage from 149 different families in this project were you surprised that so many people were eager to make their very private images so public you kno

outsiders never knew private recordings that are now public thanks to documentary filmmakers alberto herskovitz political scientist lawrence murphy. the 415 hours of home movie reels showing what real life looks like for real people under the socialist regime. the resulting website open memory box allows visitors to click keywords in english german french or russian watching clips from the archives of 149 east german families. the footage is universal most of these films seem like they could have been filmed most anyone in europe the people in them are just people living their lives despite the dictatorship. and we have one of the curators at the open memory box project with us has the 5th has joined us here in our studio. this is really interesting this project what were you looking to achieve with this where we really understood that this was a big treasure but it all began with the hope to find some media that would help us to talk to people about their experience in germany beyond. the black and why thinking. that everything was bad and not only that but also western used to look upon each