Blue Bandanas in the Summer Wind

(Blaue Wimpel im Sommerwind)

GDR, 1952, 56 min, color
In German; no subtitles
Credits:
Director
Script
Editor
Camera
Music (Score)

Synopsis

A picture of GDR youth—as party and state would have it. After summer vacation in 1952, selected Young Pioneers gather at the first national convention of the Young Pioneers, the children's division of the Free German Youth (FDJ).

 

During the convention, the children tell each other stories about their organized vacation activities. Young people build a glider at a summer camp on the Baltic Sea, take a trip with the sailboat school Wilhelm Pieck in Rostock, have a competition in the Elbe Sandstone Mountains, take an expedition of the Havel River, and visit the Thomas-Müntzer-City in Mühlhausen.

 

The high point is the Young Pioneer Convention in Dresden and the re-christening as the Ernst Thälmann Pioneer Organization. At the end, the presiding officials celebrate the Young Pioneers as their political successors and the future builders of socialism.

 

A song written for this film by author Franz Fühmann, “Die Heimat hat sich schön gemacht und Tau blitzt ihr im Haar” (“The homeland has made herself beautiful, and dew glistens in her hair”) became an East German folk song (music by Gerd Natschinski).

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