For a perfect example of the utter lunacy of the 11th Plenum, you need look no further than Hands Up, or I’ll Shoot! (Hände hoch oder ich schieße). This film is as innocuous a movie as one could hope for, yet the SED felt the need to ban it alongside nearly every other film slated …
Category: 11th Plenum
On the Sunny Side
On the Sunny Side (Auf der Sonnenseite) is an entertaining little film about a man named Martin Hoff, who goes from working in a steel foundry to taking drama classes, only to be kicked out for bad behavior. It stars Manfred Krug, who, like Hoff, was working as a steelworker when he started taking drama …
Just Don’t Think I’ll Cry
Ever wonder what it would be like to be James Dean growing up in East Germany? Look no further than Just Don’t Think I’ll Cry (Denk bloß nicht, ich heule), which captures that same inchoate teenage angst, but from an East German perspective. This film could not have been made before 1963. That was the …
A Berlin Romance
A Berlin Romance (Eine Berliner Romanze) is the second of three films sometimes referred to as the "Berlin Trilogy." These three features represent the first movies by the team of Gerhard Klein and Wolfgang Kohlhasse. They have very little in common except that they all take place in Berlin. The first of the three, Alarm …
The 11th Plenum
The Central Committee of the SED of the GDR NOTE: Readers of this blog may have noticed how often the term “11th Plenum” crops up in these film reviews. Although I define the term in the glossary, a quick definition can only scratch the surface. For those who want to learn more, I offer this …
Swan Island
As is often the case, even in so-called free countries, restrictions on what one can describe in print are less restrictive than what one can show on film. Films such as Naked Lunch and Last Exit to Brooklyn seem bowdlerized when compared to their original texts. In East Germany, there are also examples of this. …
Karla
1966 was a rough year for film in East Germany. The 11th Plenum of the previous December pulled the rug out from under some of the most intelligent and creative film talent to come out of any country at any time. East German cinema was on the verge of matching the French New Wave in …
And Your Love Too
By the summer of 1961, the political situation in East Germany had reached a tipping point. The Bundesrepublik’s decision to start using the West German Deutsche Mark in West Berlin, in spite of agreements to the contrary, had created an unsustainable imbalance between the two halves of the divided city. Many East Berliners found it …
Jadup and Boel
By 1980, the East German authorities had nearly perfected the approval process for feature films. After the debacle of the 11th Plenum in 1965, when a dozen films were rejected either for being too frivolous or not socialist enough, DEFA settled into a safe routine, usually avoiding contemporary subjects, and instead concentrating on historical biographies, …
Ursula
“Transgressive” is not a word one often uses to describe films from the GDR. With an industry so closely monitored, it was rare for a genuinely shocking film to get past the authorities, but Ursula is just such a film. To make it even more shocking, it was made for television. Ursula is directed by Egon Günther, …
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