'Eisenstaedt: Germany'

Famed Life magazine photographer Alfred Eisenstaedt has been called the father of photojournalism. In this gentle, CPTV/Connecticut presentation on PBS (Monday, 9:30-10 p.m., check local listings), an unobtrusive camera ruminates and meanders with the apolitical genius through his native country, about 45 years after he left it. Filmmaker David Hoffman follows Eisenstaedt through a session on the set of Rainer Werner Fassbinder's newest movie, a recording session at a Bavarian country church with conductor Klaus Tennstedt, and a rehearsal of Parsifal with Peter Hoffman.

Perhaps symbolic of the way Eisenstaedt integrates himself into the landscape of his subject's personality and behavior is the sequence in which the grand old man of photojournalism casually climbs on the back of the opera star's motorcycle and chugs off into the sunset.

See ''Eisenstaedt,'' and you may find yourself trading in your old Brownie for a Leica.