at the University of Massachusetts Amherst
Cinema of East Germany
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Berlin, Divided Heaven: From
the Ice Age to the Thaw
When the Wall Came Tumbling Down – Fifty
Hours that Changed the World
(Als die Mauer fiel)
A Little Addendum
(Einschub in den Bericht des Politbüros)
A two-minute political fantasy, Gunther Scholz’s Einschub in den
Bericht des Politbüros (Addendum to a Report) was greeted by amused shock
and howls of laughter when it premiered at the 1998 Berlinale in the Short Film
Competition. The “report” refers to a bid to host the 2004 Olympic Games in
Leipzig. The setting is the GDR Politbüro, where the voice of Erich Honecker
is heard: “Our bid, of course, assumes that the German Democratic Republic
will still be around in the year 2004.” The “Little Addendum” to Honecker’s
speech was made just days before the fall of the Berlin Wall.
The architect Astrid Protter (Barbara Auer) finds herself at a turning
point. Not only are things going to have to change in her marriage, but also
at work and in society as a whole. More and more frequently she argues with her
brother Alexander, who works for the State Security Service (Stasi). Soon
there is a deep rift running through her family. Meanwhile in the Nikolai
Church, the peace movement led by Reverend Ohlbaum is gaining momentum and becoming
“a serious threat to the State.” Astrid Protter has become one of their members.
. .
Nikolaikirche is the story of a family in Leipzig during the
two years of unrest starting in 1988 that culminated in the Monday demonstrations
in the autumn of 1989. Frank Beyer has made a grippingly realistic film of
Erich Loest’s novel about the dramatic events in the final days of the German Democratic
Republic.
The Promise (Das
Versprechen) A chronicle of Berlin and the Germanys from the building to the fall of the Wall, while framing an epic, bittersweet love story. A young couple intends to escape East Berlin via the sewage system. She is successful; he hesitates and is caught by the police. Their promise to always stay together meets with historical and political challenges, many of them overcome too late.
The Fall of the Wall: The Path to German
Reunification (Chronik der Wende) A two-part documentary series on the events that led to the fall of the Berlin Wall.
Quiet Country (Stilles Land)
An unsentimental portrayal of the fall of the Wall, as experienced
by an East German theater group in a small, northern town. Kai Fichte arrives
at the sleepy village as the new director of its theater. The story develops
within the time-framework of the mass emigration of East Germans to Hungary - which
leads to considerable unrest within the theater group. The play they are rehearsing,
Waiting for Godot, correlates to the film’s plot and mood - they are waiting
and don’t really know why. The story continues through to the fall of the
Wall and the immediate aftermath. Yet these events are not sensationalized.
History appears distant and they cannot reach it. The events most clearly
parallel the love relationship between Kai and Claudia, the Assistant Director.
Tired of the inactivity of her colleagues, she goes alone to the West to meet Thomas,
a West Berliner. Kai is threatened by Thomas, whose optimism captures everyone’s
attention. But only briefly. . .
Rodina Means Home
Winner of the Peace Prize at the 1992 Berlinale, Helga Reidemeister’s
Rodina Means Home chronicles in a two-hour documentary the shaky political
atmosphere in Germany and the Soviet Union shortly after the fall of the Berlin
Wall. Reidemeister was able to follow the departure of 600,000 members of
the Soviet military, together with their families, as they leave their barracks
to return home to an uncertain future in Kiev and Moscow, Samarkand and Novosibirsk.
This period of approximately eight months, from February to October 1991, also coincides
with the aborted putsch in Moscow during the month of August and the subsequent
disintegration of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) into a newly formed
Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS).
The Wall Busters
Gang (Die Mauerbrockenbande)
When Karl Heinz Lotz’s Die Mauerbrockenbande was aired on
Second German Television (ZDF), every viewer was aware that The Wall Busters
Gang was far more than just a children’s film about kids in Berlin. And
it was much more than a modern fable about tearing down a wall - although the title
teased with its reference to that mass-phenomenon known as die Mauer-Spechte
(wall-peckers), who went about their merry business day after day, with hammers
and chisels and whatever other tool was available. The ZDF broadcast took
place on September 11th, 1990, the anniversary of the day when the Hungarian borders
were opened in 1989 to allow East Germans to cross through Austria into the West.
For this entertaining and provocative “family film,” the DEFA director tells the
story of how an East Berlin family managed to follow this very route to Hungary,
then Austria, and finally back to West Berlin - to arrive on that historic day when
the wall came down. Naturally, there’s a delightful déja vu sequence in the
film: the kids decide to cross over the East Berlin and visit the home they
had so quickly abandoned but a few weeks before.
Alter, Nora. "Marcel Ophuls'
November Days." Film Quarterly 51.2 (Winter 1997/98):
32-43.
- - - . "Re/fusing Past and
Present: Cinematic Reunification under the Sign of Nationalism and Racism:
Helke Misselwitz's Herzsprung." Beyond 1989: Re-reading German
Literary History Since 1945. Keith Bullivant, ed. Providence: Berghahn
Books, 1997. 129-152.
- - - . "Staging Re/Unification:
For and By the West." History of European Ideas. Sashat Talmor,
ed. Cambridge: MIT Press, 1996.
Borneman, John. After
the Wall. East meets West in the New Berlin. BasicBooks, 1991.
Brady, Martin, and Helen Hughes.
“German Film After the Wende.” The New Germany: Social, Political
and Cultural Challenges of Unification. Derek Lewis and John R. P. McKenzie,
eds. Exeter, 1995. 279-85.
Buford, Bill, ed. New
Europe! New York: Viking Penguin, 1990.
Byg, Barton. "German Unification
and the Cinema of the Former German Democratic Republic.” Michigan Germanic
Studies 21.1-2 (Spring/Fall, 1995): 150-168.
- - - . "Study of GDR Cinema
after 1989: Reflections and Prospects." GDR Bulletin 19.1 (Spring
1993): 1-4.
Franz, Karen Annette. “Imagining
the Nation: Representation and Identity in German Film and Television since
Unification--Visual Analysis of East German Documentaries from 1989 to 1994.”
Diss. University of Minnesota, March 1996.
Hanel, Walter, Susan Stern, and James G. Neuger,
eds. Off the Wall: A Wacky History of Germany since 1989.
Frankfurt: Atlantik-Brücke,
1993.
Huelshoff, Michael G., Andrei S.
Markovits, and Simon Reich, eds. From Bundesrepublik to Deutschland:
German Politics after Unification. Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan
Press, 1993.
Hughes, Helen. “Documenting the Wende:
The Films of Andreas Voigt.” DEFA: East German Cinema, 1946-1992.
Seán Allan and John Sandford, eds. New York: Berghahn, 1999.
283-301.
Jarausch, Konrad H., ed. After
Unity: Reconfiguring German Identities.
Providence: Berghahn Books, 1997.
Naughton, Leonie. “We
Were the People: Film Culture, Comedy and the Unification of Germany.”
Diss. La Trobe University Australia, August 1996.
Nowell-Smith, Geoffrey, and Tana
Wollen, eds. After the Wall: Broadcasting in Germany. London:
British Film Institute, 1991.
Parmalee, Patty Lee. "Movies
Document a Turn." German Politics and Society 29 (Summer 1993):
112-133.
Philipsen, Dirk. We Were
The People: Voices From East Germany’s Revolutionary Autumn of 1989.
Durham: Duke UP, 1993.
Rinke, Andrea. "From Motzki
to Trotzki: Representations of East and West German cultural identities on
German television after unification." The New Germany: Literature and Society
after Unification. Osman Durrani, et. al., eds. Sheffield, England:
Sheffield Academic Press, 1995, 231-251.
Schneider, Peter. The
German Comedy: Scenes of Life after the Wall. New York: Farrar,
Straus, Giroux, 1991.
Silberman, Marc. "Post-Wall
Documentaries: New Images from a New Germany?" Cinema Journal
33.2 (Winter 1994): 22-41.
Simpson, Patricia A, guest ed.
Gegenwartsbewältigung: The GDR After
the Wende. Special Issue of Michigan Germanic
Studies 21.1/2 (Spring/Fall, 1995).
Stern, Susan, ed. Meet United Germany:
Handbook 1992 / 93.
Frankfurt: Atlantik-Brücke, 1992. |
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