When the Berlin Wall finally came down, East Germans danced for joy in the streets. No more Stasi, no more food shortages, no more travel restrictions, and no more fiddling with their Trabis to get the damned things started. At the time, most people in East Germany were glad to see the backside of the … Continue reading Herzsprung
Tag: Thomas Plenert
Apprehension
One of the goals of DEFA films, stated at the very start of the production company, was to present stories from as objective a viewpoint as possible. When Kurt Maetzig made The Council of the Gods, his intention was to avoid both the romanticism of Hollywood and the socialist realism of Soviet films. He wanted … Continue reading Apprehension
Winter Adé
The first films made in what would become East Germany after the war (at that point, still the Soviet sector), were short documentary films. Most of these early films were for propaganda purposes, showing how the Soviet Union was helping rebuild Germany after the war. After DEFA was established, documentary films were handled by a … Continue reading Winter Adé
East German Cinema Blog 