Helga - Vom Werden des menschlichen Lebens (1967)

An interviewer asks passers-by on the street whether they would watch a serious educational film. After they agree, the “drive to preserve the species” is explained using single-celled organisms. Then mothers tell a group of curious boys and girls how children are conceived. A gynecologist teaches her daughter and some of her classmates about the male sex organs, while diagrams and microscope footage are shown. Helga, who is sexually inexperienced and uninformed, wants to get married and have the doctor examine her beforehand. After the examination, the doctor invites Helga into the living room, where she explains the process of menstruation to the young girls. A doctor gives a lecture on birth control and contraception. Soon Helga is pregnant and attends a class for expectant mothers, where she is given detailed information about the birth ahead. The processes inside the body up to the development of the embryo are shown in microscope footage. At a clinic’s nursing school, the process of childbirth is discussed. The birth itself is shown in every detail in the film. Soon afterward, Helga is a happy mother who cares for her baby and later gives birth to three more children.