The musical comedy is not a genre anyone would associate with East Germany. It was born in Hollywood and reached its acme under Arthur Freed at MGM. Musical comedies are happy affairs, light as meringues, colorful, and carefree—not qualities that immediately spring to mind when one thinks of the GDR. But DEFA made several musicals, and …
Category: Musical
Midnight Revue
Communist musicals are in a class by themselves. So much so that in 1997, filmmaker Dana Ranga made them the subject of her fascinating documentary East Side Story—required viewing for anyone interested in the films of the GDR or other Eastern Bloc countries. In a world as grim and gray as East Germany could be, …
Hot Summer
By the end of the 1960s, it was obvious to all but the most iron-headed autocrats that East Germany was facing a crisis of culture. Despite every effort to seal the public off from the invidious influences of the West, information was getting through, and the young people of the GDR were becoming more and …
DEFA Disko 77
In 1977, disco fever swept the world. The Bee Gees—formerly a Beatles-influenced band—had reinvented themselves as the kings of the nightlife, John Travolta was teaching people how to dance, and skin-tight polyester shirts were flying off the shelves. In West Berlin, an Italian music producer named Giorgio Moroder met an American singer named Donna Summer …
In the Dust of the Stars
Sometimes referred to as the “East German Barbarella,” In the Dust of the Stars (Im Staub der Sterne) is one of the strangest films to grace the movie screens of the GDR; or anywhere else for that matter. Featuring a cast that hailed from a number of different Eastern European countries, In the Dust of …
The Legend of Paul and Paula
The late 1960s were a time of great changes in German Cinema. Starting with Volker Schlöndorff’s Young Törless (Der junge Törleß) and followed soon after by the almost experimental films of Fassbinder and Herzog, filmmaking in the West was experiencing a creative renaissance. In the GDR, filmmakers were still trying to maintain their artistic freedom, …
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