Author: Jim Morton

I am a writer and film historian. I have written extensively on unique film genres. My work has appeared in several books and magazines. I currently reside in San Francisco.

The Man From Canada

Spies from the West are planning to get a jet pilot in MiG to defect to West Germany and it's up to the clever Stasi agents to stop them. The first of trilogy of films features the Stasi agent Major Sander. The sixties were the decade of spy films. That’s not to say there weren’t … Continue reading The Man From Canada →

Camping-Camping

A light-hearted look at beach camping, infidelity seventies fashions, and Trabants. Lots and lots of Trabants. In 1991, less than two years after the Berlin Wall came down, a film called Go Trabi Go hit the cinemas in Germany. It’s the story of a man, his wife, and their bored teenage daughter who—taking advantage of … Continue reading Camping-Camping →

The Female Director of East Germany, Pt. 2: The DFF Directors

In my last article, I looked at the women who made feature films for DEFA. Even more overlooked—but no less worthy of attention—are the women who directed films for Deutscher Fernsehfunk (DFF), the GDR’s state-run television station broadcaster.1 For DEFA directors, especially after the 11th Plenum, television was sometimes used as a form of punishment … Continue reading The Female Director of East Germany, Pt. 2: The DFF Directors →

The Female Directors of East Germany Pt. 1: The DEFA Directors

A short overview of the women directors who worked at DEFA.

The Murder of Rathenau

A 1961 television docudrama about the assassination of the German Foreign Minister for the Weimar Republic who tried to make peace with the Soviets. A morality play about the impossibility of finding common ground when you’re dealing with fascists.

Were the Earth Not Round

While sitting in a hospital with her ailing daughter, an East German woman reflects on her relationship with a Syrian man and her grandfather’s obsession with building a perpetual motion machine. Were the Earth Not Round (Wäre die Erde nicht rund) is the story of Christiane (Bożena Stryjkówna), an East German woman studying geology at … Continue reading Were the Earth Not Round →

Location Hunting

When documentary filmmaker Rüdiger Stein decides to make a film about an ordinary couple, he finds that he's bitten off more than her can chew.

Lotte in Weimar

In 1774, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s The Sorrows of Young Werther took Germany by storm.1 Goethe would go on to become the most important writer in Germany and it started with this book. The book is told from the perspective of a young man, pining over his unrequited love for a woman named Lotte. He … Continue reading Lotte in Weimar →

Biology!

A fifteen-year-old girl decides that the adults in her community aren’t taking environmental issues seriously enough, so she starts a campaign to keep them from destroying the environment. Sound familiar? This film was made fourteen years before Greta Thunberg was born. In 1989, the government in the GDR had begun to relax its restrictions on … Continue reading Biology! →