Farewell, Beautiful Forest... or How a Film Was CensoredFarewell, Beautiful Forest... or How a Film Was Censored

An ecological catastrophe in the Ore Mountains on the Czech German border: Foresters and residents desperately try to save this landscape from forest devastation. But they face a doctrinaire state power that turns a blind eye and denies the facts.After the filmmaker's initial proposal in 1983, permission to film was finally granted in 1987 and the crew shot in the Czech border region of Most and Teplice in 1988. But "forest dieback" was a forbidden word in East Germany. Consequently, none of the film's eight versions passed censorship and the project was banned. Finally, in 1989/90, after the political changes in East Germany, the original version of the film was reconstructed, and the story about its censorship was included into the film.