Basis-Film was founded by Christian Ziewer, an outgrowth of the student movement after Ziewer and others were dismissed from Berlin's Film and Television Academy. Among Basis-Film's productions is Alfred Behrens' Berliner Stadtbahnbilder (PFA 4/87). "The first Basis-Film was Ziewer's Dear Mother, I Am Well. Dear Mother dramatizes with psychological precision and social acuity the stormy relationships within a group of workers who are trying to gain better working conditions. Without sanctifying the proletariat or vilifying management, the film is a breathless and convincing union tale. Its angry protagonist is played by the actor Claus Eberth, while virtually everyone else is a worker playing a worker. Dear Mother is billed as a documentary feature; its precise events are fictional, but the organizing process it describes is not. The script is a distillation of oral histories by workers, many of whom appear in the film. When the film opened it was hailed as a work without precedent in the Federal Republic, and soon came to be known as the first Berlin workers' film." Laurence Kardish, "Berlin and Film"