The final years of East Germany’s existence saw a relaxing of the restrictions on what could be filmed and what couldn’t. After the Wende, DEFA continued to exist for a few years, and continued to make films using the same stable of technicians and actors, but now they could make films about the one thing … Continue reading The Mistake
Category: Heiner Carow
Career
Director Heiner Carow hated Career. He only made it to salvage his footage from The Russians are Coming after that film was banned by the East German authorities. Along with footage from his own film, Carow adds newsreel footage from other sources1 to fashion a film about a businessman in West Germany named Günter Walcher who … Continue reading Career
The Russians Are Coming
During the final year of World War II, the war in Germany became a war of children. Hitler’s war effort had so depleted the ranks of adult males that teenagers were drafted to fight. Having grown up under the Third Reich, indoctrination for the Fatherland started at an early age, these young men were Hitler’s … Continue reading The Russians Are Coming
Until Death Do Us Part
Until Death Do Us Part (Bis daß der Tod euch scheidet)1 is the story of a couple whose mad love for each other smashes headlong into the husband’s patriarchal value system. It’s an old story. Throughout history men have been telling women it’s “my way or the highway,” usually with bad results. According to some … Continue reading Until Death Do Us Part
Coming Out
On the night of November 9, 1989, all hell broke loose in East Germany. Politburo member Günter Schabowski, while preparing for a press conference, was handed a memo on the new travel regulations for East German citizens. The memo stated that East Germans would now be allowed to travel abroad. What the memo did not … Continue reading Coming Out
The Silent Star
It is worth noting that while people often give Star Trek credit for using a multi-ethnic cast at a time when TV in American was almost exclusively the domain of white males, The Silent Star had already done this six years earlier.
East German Cinema Blog 