When a car full of strangers arrives in Willshagen, the rumors start to fly. The action in What Would Happen If…? (Was wäre, wenn...?) takes place in Willshagen, an imaginary village that sits in a bulge on the border between East and West Germany. Many of the people in the town have either joined the …
Seitensprung
While I normally use the English language title for my heading, I’ve decided to go with the German title on this one. There are a number of ways to translate this title into English. They include: “escapade,” “affair,” “a bit on the side,” “adultery,” and “infidelity.” Escapade is the title used by IMDB and some …
The Condemned Village
If you look up The Condemned Village (Das verurteilte Dorf) on Wikipedia (either the English or the German version) you’ll find it described as a “propaganda film.” You could argue that point, but if you look up The Steel Fist, My Son John, Red Snow, or Walk East on Beacon—all made the same year as …
The Man from the Cap Arcona
In 1982, Erwin Geschonneck starred in the East German television movie The Man from the Cap Arcona (Der Mann von der Cap Arcona). In it, Geschonneck plays a character called Erwin Gregorek, who has returned to Hamburg to appear in a documentary about the sinking of the Cap Arcona, a luxury liner that was being …
A Girl of 16½
A popular wall poster for the young people who opposed the Vietnam War read: “War is unhealthy for children and other living things.” After World War II, Germany saw the full effect of this. German fathers were either killed or imprisoned, and the mothers waiting at home fell prey to the Allied bombs. Parents would …
Liane
At the start of Liane, we see the films namesake applying for a part in a film being shot at the electrical company where she works. Immediately, we see that she’s the type of person who speaks candidly, regardless of the situation. Liane works as a Springer—a job designation that’s only one step above being …
The Teleplays of Christa Kulosa
A popular format on East German TV was the teleplay. These were videotaped on stage in front of a live audience. In America, you’ll see this most often with sitcoms such as Cheers or I Love Lucy. Similarly, these East German teleplays were mostly comedies, but were unique, one-hour to hour-and-a-half shows rather than series …
5+1 Films That Look Back at the GDR
My next article on the East Germany Cinema Blog is going to take at least another week of work, so, in the meantime, here’s a listicle to keep things moving. These are five (plus one bonus film) of the best post-Wende films on the subject of life in East Germany that I have seen. I’ve …
The Blue Light
As I’ve discussed on this blog before, East Germany had an above-average track record on female equality and films about women’s issues, yet there were only a few female directors at DEFA. First and foremost among these was Iris Gusner. She wasn’t the first women to direct feature films at DEFA. That honor goes to …
Those East German Barge Films
While sailing films are about striking out into the unknown and houseboat films are about living somewhere that just happens to be on the water, barge films fall somewhere in between. They are often aquatic road movies, with the characters slowly traveling from place to place, entering the lives of people then departing. Barge films …
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