Perhaps the best-known film about the RAF, "The Baader-Meinhof Complex" (2008) provides the terrorist group's back story and their actions based on a book of the same name written by Stefan Aust. The film received mixed reviews, with some critics claiming it mystified the RAF - in part due to a star cast including Moritz Bleibtreu as Andreas Baader and Martina Gedeck as Ulrike Meinhof.

Whether it was the murder of business executive and industry representative Hanns-Martin Schleyer, the early RAF court trials or the hijacking of a Lufthansa airplane, the far-left militant group Red Army Faction (RAF) brought a wave of terror onto West Germany in the 1970s. Their actions have since inspired a number of filmmakers.

In "The Lost Honor of Katharina Blum," a young woman played by Angela Winkler has an affair with an alleged terrorist, drawing the attention of the police, the judiciary system and the press. The 1975 film by Volker Schlöndorrf, based on a book by Heinrich Böll, is a fictional story based on the left-wing terrorism that took place in Germany in the 1960s and 1970s.

"'Germany in Autumn' is not a 'good' film, but an important one," wrote Die Zeit. The 1978 film, comprised of 11 episodes, brought together top German directors including Rainer Werner Fassbinder and Volker Schlöndorff. Reflecting the socio-political climate of West Germany in the 1970s, this film was also based on a work by Nobel Prize-winning author Heinrich Böll.

"Knife in the Head," starring Bruno Ganz as Dr. Hoffmann, was a 1978 blockbuster in West Germany. During a police raid, he is shot in the head but survives. But is he a victim of police brutality or terrorism? No one seems to know - not even Hoffmann, who loses his memory in the shooting.

Margarethe von Trotta's 1981 film "Marianne and Juliane" is a fictionalized account based on the biographies of two real-life sisters and pastor's daughters, Christiane and Gudrun Ensslin. Both are active in politics. While one is a quiet pragmatist, the other joins the RAF and is later found dead in her prison cell. The film helped von Trotta make her international breakthrough.

About 10 years after the Stammheim trial of RAF co-founders Andreas Baader and Ulrike Meinhof, filmmaker Reinhard Hauff devoted a new film to the subject of RAF terrorism. Based on authentic protocols, "Stammheim" (1986) reconstructs the 192-day trial in 1975. The narrative is limited to the protocol reproduction and does not include any commentary.

"The State I Am In" is a 2000 film by Christian Petzold about life after being part of the RAF. A couple who defied the German state in the 1970s lives underground with their daughter for years out of fear of being caught. While the parents are plagued by paranoia, the daughter decides to break out of hiding.

Another story of life in hiding, this time in the former East Germany, is Volker Schlöndorff's "The Legend of Rita." In the film from 2000, left-wing terrorists go underground in East Germany in the 1970s with the help of the Stasi. After German reunification, their cover is blown and they are shot and killed while trying to escape. Several RAF members really did attempt to hide in East Germany.

The documentary film released in 2001 by director Andres Veiel, "Black Box BRD" offers a counter-narrative in which surprising parallels open up. On the one side there is Alfred Herrhausen, spokesperson for Deutsche Bank's board of directors, who was murdered by the RAF. On the other side is RAF member Wolfgang Grams, whose violent death also raises questions.

In "Die Anwälte - Eine deutsche Geschichte" (The Lawyers - A German Story) from 2009, the careers of Otto Schily, Hans-Christian Ströbele and Horst Mahler are traced from their days as attorneys for the left-wing political opposition in the 1970s to the present. Schily (right) became interior minister; Ströbele (left) joined the Greens party; Mahler is a right-wing extremist and Holocaust denier.

Andres Veiel made his feature film debut in 2011, in "If Not Us, Who?" The story of an emotional and sexual love triangle follows RAF co-founder Gudrun Ensslin and Bernward Vesper, son of a Nazi poet, as they fall in love, get married and have a child. But then Ensslin leaves the family and follows Andreas Baader into the RAF underground.

British fashion designer Mary Quant (right) made mini skirts socially acceptable, with models showing off their legs in a fashion show in 1968. German women quickly picked up the trend. Short skirts were followed by short dresses, coats and — the ultimate fashion statement — "hot pants" shorts women loved to match with a maxi coat.

Rock and pop music were dominated by male bands, with the Rolling Stones paying homage to the "Street Fighting Man," and the Beatles in the charts with "Revolution." At best, women were singers or groupies in Germany — until the first all-girl band formed in Duisburg in the mid 1960s with cool chicks on the drums and guitar: the "Rag Dolls" (pictured).

After hearing that "a German woman doesn't wear make-up" in the Nazi era, heavily made-up eyes were part of every woman's evening dress in the mid '60s. Women looked to actresses (Claudia Cardinale, pictured) and singers like Esther Ofarim and Daliah Lavi for the new look. Forget the natural look: black eyeliner and thick, dark eyebrows were utterly stylish.

At the time, a woman's role in West Germany was clearly defined by tradition. Women were mainly homemakers, they raised children and fun was reserved for Sunday outings. The photo shows ladies in 1968 at the Wolfsburg Marksmen Club, in a picture taken by renowned German photographer Robert Lebeck.

In 1968, the opposite of the prim 1960s housewife hit the movie screens. In the science fiction film "Barbarella," a sexy Jane Fonda enthralled the audience. The cult movie was directed by Roger Vadim, who made several films with Brigitte Bardot, while fashion designer Paco Rabanne created the futuristic costumes.

"Make love, not war" — the US antiwar slogan quickly found its way to Germany, too. In the late '60s, offshoots of the hippie movement also made their way across the Atlantic. Jimi Hendrix and his band, The Jimi Hendrix Experience, played in Cologne, Berlin and London in 1968, their freaky outfits and stage shows a thrill and inspiration to European fans.

That year Janis Joplin told her audiences that "freedom is just another word for nothing left to lose." Germans adored her freewheeling hippie look. Fashion designers worldwide copied the vibrant flowing dresses, bangles and necklaces, and bordered blouses — soon found in department stores everywhere.

The student rebellions that year changed people's outlook on life. Suddenly, there was free love. Poeple chose entirely new forms of living, sometimes replacing traditional marriages and life in a small family unit with life in a commune instead, like Berlin's infamous "Kommune I" community.

Young artists from across the German-speaking world also began to turn to provocative action. In what she called "Tap and Touch," Valie Export, who was from Vienna, Austria, challenged men to touch her. It was her way to try and break down gender traditions, and patriarchal leadership structures in the art academies, by making them face up to a real woman.

Students came up with new forms of protest, including the popular sit-ins, like the one pictured above in February 1968 ahead of the International Vietnam Conference at Berlin's Technical University. Sit-ins, go-ins and teach-ins were soon part of the students' everyday lives.

Protests and demonstrations weren't only staged by students and at colleges in 1968. Young and old took to the streets. Renowned novelist Heinrich Böll (pictured), who was very critical of the German postwar political establishment, spoke to crowds at a peace protest in Bonn. The antiwar movement was peaking as the Vietnam War and Cold War continued without end.