Unpublished footage from filmmaker Thomas Heise’s career chronicles his home country from 1980s GDR to Germany in 2008. Heise’s outtakes capture many moments, including the 1989 mass demonstrations outside Alexanderplatz, scenes inside Brandenburg prison, and a far-left attack at a film screening.

A celebrated chronicler of societal change in Germany, documentary filmmaker Thomas Heise performed a stunning act of cinematic archeology with this colossal, decades-spanning work. Assembled from previously unused footage, Material is a radical vision of a resurrected, profoundly fractured history.