There have been many anti-war plays over the years, but none so well-regarded as Bertolt Brecht’s classic Mother Courage and Her Children (Mutter Courage und ihre Kinder). Brecht wrote it in 1939, but kept tinkering with it right up until his death in 1956. Its themes of exploitation, forced migration, and the futility and foolishness …
Life Together
Life Together (Leben zu zweit) is a romantic comedy with a plot that sounds like something straight out of Hollywood. Karin Werner (Marita Böhme) is the divorced mother in her mid-thirties, who's been secretly dating a mathematician named Peter Freund (Alfred Müller). She’s kept the affair secret because she worries how her fifteen-year-old daughter Nora …
Cyanide
Abortion as a hot-button topic is nothing new. Witness the German playwright Friedrich Wolf's play Cyanide (Cyankali). It debuted in 1929 and was made into a movie the following year. The play was first performed at the Lessing Theater and became the biggest hit of the theater’s season. When it was made into a movie …
Red Fox
The Red Fox (Rotfuchs) of the title is Eve Kolinauke (Angelika Waller), a postal worker in the small river town of Müritz (filmed in Tangermünde and at the Wesenberg Lock). Eve earned her nickname thanks to her bright red hair. She tootles around the town on an underpowered moped, delivering the mail and attempting to …
Atkins
Loner Atkins finds himself caught between renegade Indians and a copper miner.
The Hunting Party
This made-for-TV teleplay concerns a German party right before the Russians arrived.
The Man From Canada
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, …
Camping-Camping
In 1991, less than two years after the Berlin Wall came down, a film called Go Trabi Go hit the cinemas in Germany. It’s the story of a man, his wife, and their bored teenage daughter who—taking advantage of the newly available European West—drive to Italy in their trusty old Trabant. While the husband is …
The Female Director of East Germany, Pt. 2: The DFF Directors
In my last article, I looked at the women who made feature films for DEFA. Even more overlooked—but no less worthy of attention—are the women who directed films for Deutscher Fernsehfunk (DFF), the GDR’s state-run television station broadcaster.1 For DEFA directors, especially after the 11th Plenum, television was sometimes used as a form of punishment …
Continue reading The Female Director of East Germany, Pt. 2: The DFF Directors
The Female Directors of East Germany Pt. 1: The DEFA Directors
A short overview of the women directors who worked at DEFA.
East German Cinema Blog 