While the rest of the world was undergoing huge cultural upheavals, East Germany’s leaders were busy battening down the hatches, shutting the windows, and stuffing cotton in their collective ears; anything to avoid acknowledging that somewhere between 1965 and 1971 the world had changed completely. The politicians in the GDR got a glimpse of these …
Category: Pop Culture
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 …
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 …
The Baldheaded Gang
The Baldheaded Gang (Die Glatzkopfbande) is East Germany’s only biker film, and a possible precursor to the skinhead movement. Made in 1963—a full three years before Roger Corman kick-started the biker genre with The Wild Angels—the film follows the story of a gang of bikers who cause trouble at a vacation spot on the Baltic …
Born in ’45
When the noted East German director/cinematographer, Werner Bergmann, left the preview screening of Born in ‘45 (Jahrgang 45), he turned to Roland Gräf, the film’s cinematographer, and spat: “Eastern Bloc Italians!” He may have meant it as an insult, but Gräf took it as a compliment. Born in ‘45 was a conscious attempt to duplicate …
Berlin Schönhauser Corner
During the 1950s, Middle America was obsessed with the “problem” of juvenile delinquency. Hollywood—always ready to exploit any fear that popped out of the American psyche—latched onto this topic and ran with it. The trend started with The Blackboard Jungle, which was such a hit that in no time there were dozens of other films …
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, …
East German Cinema Blog 