VOM TRAUM, UNSINKBAR ZU SEIN - Ein Heimatfilm auf dem Meer

“A journey across the sea and through time: Four ships from what was once the GDR’s largest fishing fleet survived the fall of the Berlin Wall and now sail under different flags in new waters. They tell stories of work, community, and home—and explore what remains of those things today: the Nida, the Seefuchs, the Stubnitz, and the Blauwal.”

The event will be followed by an in-depth discussion with an opportunity for questions from the audience: Urs Blaser, alias Blo (Cultural Captain of the Stubnitz, 1992–2022), Oliver G. Schmidt (navigator, engineer, captain, and former operator of the Seefuchs), Tom Fröhlich (director).

“In *THE DREAM OF BEING UNSINKABLE*, Rostock-based director Tom Fröhlich embarks on a maritime journey back to his roots. At the height of its glory, the GDR’s deep-sea fishing fleet comprised over 100 vessels—the largest ever to sail under the German flag. For four decades, the major shipping company did not lose a single ship at sea. Today, only a few of these steel colossi remain. Tom Fröhlich has tracked down four of them: off the coast of Greenland, in a Spanish port, at a Danish scrapyard, and in the Port of Hamburg. They are the last witnesses to a vanished working world—and at the same time, living places where people still work, live, and remember. Narrated by Charly Hübner and featuring shanties by the choir “Luv und Lee.”»

• Website at Jip-Film
• Trailer on YouTube
• Premiere in Hamburg on July 7, 2026: Metropolis Kino Hamburg

Urs Blaser (alias Blo)

Urs Blaser (alias Blo), co-founder of the STUBNITZ Art-Space-Ship project in Rostock, established in 1992, served as its “cultural captain” from 1994 to 2022. Prior to that, he traveled across Europe with the media art project “Radio-Subcom.” As a former musician and sound artist, his primary interest lay in contemporary live music.

For this mobile industrial monument—registered since 2003—he planned and coordinated, together with a constantly changing crew, some 120 cultural collaboration projects in 22 Northern European port cities. In 2013, the ship was assigned its current location by HafenCity Hamburger GmbH and, shortly thereafter, received the federal government’s “Venue of the Year 2013” award.

In 2016, he successfully secured federal and state historic preservation funds for a comprehensive ship restoration, which he subsequently oversaw and completed in 2022. During his time aboard the Stubnitz, Urs Blaser documented around 5,000 live concerts as a sound engineer.

• Stubnitz Story
• Conversation between Felix Kubin and Urs Blaser on Contemporary Music in the City (1/3)
• Conversation between Felix Kubin and Urs Blaser on Access to Music (2/3)
• Felix Kubin & Urs Blaser on Sound Systems & Acoustics (3/3)
• TAZ: “‘The Ship as a Conceptual Model’—30 years ago, Urs ‘Blo’ Blaser transformed the GDR deep-sea trawler ‘Stubnitz’ into a cultural vessel. A lot has changed since then.”

Oliver G. Schmidt

Through some wonderful detours, I eventually found my way to seafaring. It began with vocational training as a boatbuilder, followed by an apprenticeship, studies in naval architecture and mechanical engineering, and later the attainment of my nautical license as a ship’s officer/captain. Alongside my career and family—and made possible only through the support of close friends and fellow enthusiasts—I also found time to dedicate myself to the preservation and, later, the operation of a research and expedition vessel. The ship, a 26.5-meter cutter from the Sassnitz fishing fleet decommissioned in 1990, was acquired in 1993 and operated as the MS SEEFUCHS in the Baltic Sea until 2017. The ship served as a medium and platform for people’s diverse and voluntary commitment to science, culture, and social causes, as well as for the ship’s operations necessary to support these efforts. In the public eye, the SEEFUCHS was also inextricably linked to underwater archaeology in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania and research voyages conducted by the German Oceanographic Museum in Stralsund. Over the course of 24 years, the ship’s voyages took it around the Baltic Sea and, for its handover to SeaEye, ultimately to Brest, France.

• Seefuchs
• Amberland Engineering

Tom Fröhlich

Tom Fröhlich grew up in the Hanseatic city of Rostock. After completing vocational training as a media designer, he studied at h_da Darmstadt (Motion Pictures) and the Konrad Wolf Film University (Directing). His body of work includes nationally and internationally acclaimed documentary films, documentaries, and documentary series. His debut film, “Ink of Yam,” about a tattoo studio in Jerusalem, won the Hessian Film Award in 2017. For “Das perfekte Schwarz” (2019), Tom Fröhlich accompanied six people on a quest to find diversity in nothingness. The film premiered at the Hof Film Festival and celebrated its international premiere at CPH:dox in Copenhagen. “The Dream of Being Unsinkable” is Tom Fröhlich’s third feature-length documentary about the search for the last ships of the GDR’s deep-sea fishing fleet. Tom Fröhlich lives and works in Leipzig and Potsdam.

• Website