The 1960s were the decade of spy films. That’s not to say there weren’t spy films before and after that decade. Spy films go all the way back to the silent era with films such as The General (1926) and Spione (1928). Hitchcock put the genre to good use throughout his career (The 39 Steps, …
Category: Republikflucht
The Night on the Autobahn
Right after the Wall was built, politicians were anxious to demonstrate that the Wall would have no effect on creative freedom, and that, if anything, it would protect the average person from the thieves and scoundrels who had been exploiting the porous border with impunity. Films from this period often addressed the Wall and why …
Jana and Jan
With the notable exception of horror movies, the East German film industry (that is to say, DEFA) made films of nearly every genre from Westerns to science fiction; from thrillers to romantic comedies. If it were a Hollywood film, Jana and Jan (Jana und Jan) would be categorized as a women-in-prison film, but without the …
Track in the Night
In America, we tend to parse out films about crime into specific categories, such as heist films, detective films, film noir, mysteries, and so on. In both East and West Germany, these films are lumped into one big group: Kriminalfilme, or “crime films,” usually referred to as “Krimis.” Many West German Krimis center around a …
Look at This City!
On Sunday morning, August 13, 1961, the citizens of Berlin woke up to a remarkable event. While they were sleeping, East German soldiers had constructed a barbed wire fence around the entire city of West Berlin. Workers were already beginning to tear up the roads between the east and the west, and armed soldiers stood …
East German Cinema Blog 