Seven Freckles (Sieben Sommersprossen) is the story of the love affair between Karoline and Robbi—two fifteen-year-olds who had been close two years earlier and meet up again at summer camp. Standing in their way is Marlene, an attractive but self-absorbed girl who also has the hots for Robbi. When one of the camp counselors decides …
Category: Wende
The Gleiwitz Case
The Gleiwitz Case (Der Fall Gleiwitz) is director Gerhard Klein’s 1961 film about an event in southern Poland that was used by Hitler to start World War II. Hitler knew he couldn’t start a war without provocation, and since none was forthcoming, he did what any good tyrant would do: he created one. After all, …
The Bicycle
The protagonists in East German films are frequently women. In movies such as Her Third, He You!, and The Dove on the Roof, the plots center around women who are on an equal (or superior) footing to their male counterparts. Even in genre films such as Signals and In the Dust of the Stars, we …
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 Architects
How a film fares at the box office is highly dependent on when it's released. A movie that will one day be recognized as a cinematic treasure might bomb miserably upon release simply because it wasn’t what people wanted to see at that time. A classic example of this is Billy Wilder’s Ace in the …
East German Cinema Blog 