Were the Earth Not Round (Wäre die Erde nicht rund) is the story of Christiane (Bożena Stryjkówna), an East German woman studying geology at a university in Moscow. The story is told in flashbacks while Christiane waits for her ailing daughter to leave the hospital. The flashbacks jump back and forth between the woman’s childhood …
Category: Iris Gusner
The Teleplays of Christa Kulosa
A popular format on East German TV was the teleplay. These were videotaped on stage in front of a live audience. In America, you’ll see this most often with sitcoms such as Cheers or I Love Lucy. Similarly, these East German teleplays were mostly comedies, but were unique, one-hour to hour-and-a-half shows rather than series …
The Blue Light
As I’ve discussed on this blog before, East Germany had an above-average track record on female equality and films about women’s issues, yet there were only a few female directors at DEFA. First and foremost among these was Iris Gusner. She wasn’t the first woman to direct feature films at DEFA. That honor goes to …
Bailing Out
The title of Bailing Out (Kaskade rückwärts) refers to a particularly tricky equestrian move where the rider, rather than performing an emergency dismount by a normal method, does a backwards somersault off the rear of the horse. The move is ably demonstrated in the film, and it is impressive, but it’s really a stunt move …
All My Girls
As mentioned elsewhere on this blog, the communist countries were way ahead of the West when it came to women’s rights. At the time of the Wende, over half the judges in East Germany were women, as were at least a third of the doctors. However, there were certain areas where women were decidedly underrepresented. …
East German Cinema Blog 