Two teenagers, who are paired up in dance class, eventually fall in love in this period piece from 1974. TRIGGER WARNING: Contains fashions from 1974. Love at 16 (Liebe mit 16) belongs to a list of DEFA films that focus on the concerns of teenagers. The list includes Just Don’t Think I’ll Cry, Too Young … Continue reading Love at 16
Category: Rainer Simon
Set a Fire, the Fire Brigade Is Coming
What happens to a fire department when the town there in never has any fires? That’s the idea behind the TruTV’s new comedy Tacoma FD. But it isn’t the first time someone thought of this. It’s also the concept behind Set a Fire, the Fire Brigade Is Coming (Zünd an, es kommt die Feuerwehr), the … Continue reading Set a Fire, the Fire Brigade Is Coming
The Airship
In The Airship (Das Luftschiff), director Rainer Simon looks at the creative urge, how it drives a person forward, and how it can cloud their vision, leaving them vulnerable to exploitation. It is a wildly experimental film with a narrative that jumps back and forth in time and features direct-on-film animation. The film follows the … Continue reading The Airship
How to Marry King
Right from the opening credits, How to Marry a King (Wie heiratet man einen König?) lets us know that this is not going to be like any DEFA fairytale film that came before it. It starts in the real outdoors, not a film set, with long shots of a woman being kicked out of her … Continue reading How to Marry King
The Woman and the Stranger
The Woman and the Stranger (Die Frau und der Fremde) was released in 1985, less than five years before the Berlin Wall came down. Like many of the late-period DEFA films, it concentrated less on the concerns of the collective than individual needs. It is probably for this reason that the film found an audience … Continue reading The Woman and the Stranger
Till Eulenspiegel
Every country has its folk heroes. Many of these, such as Robin Hood, William Tell, and Fong Sai-yuk, were most likely real people, but any facts about them are so buried by history that all we have left is the folklore. Others, such as Paul Bunyan and Beowulf, started life as folktales and have never … Continue reading Till Eulenspiegel
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, … Continue reading Jadup and Boel
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