Elaste aus Schkopau shows petromodernity east, the glory days of the petrochemical industry in the GDR and the evocation of its utopian futuristic potentials in the 1960s. A highly elaborate artistic montage, just like its west-german pendant by Hugo Niebeling shown in the same room, it doesn't need any voice-over to be convincing. Imagery and sounds from all petrochemical and petromodern production spheres and ways of life are combined. The visions of a modern and clean society it depicts, and of a pan-european union of peoples united in the delight in plastics contrasts heavily in retrospect with the harsh reality of a population locked in since the building of the wall in 1961, and the increasingly devastating ecological consequences of an industry that in large parts was forced to go back to lignite due to the USSR withholding the promised influx of petroleum.

Uwe Belz (1937 - 2002) was one of the most prolific east-german documentary filmmakers and writers, yet not as well known as others. His oeuvre, starting in 1969 and compriing 150 films, more than 30 of them shot after the end of the GDR, ranges from industry film to experimental short films to travel features.