Biography:

Evelyn Carow was born in Berlin in 1931. She began her film career in 1949 as an apprentice at a film laboratory. After completing her training in 1952, she was hired by the DEFA Studios as an assistant editor. Her first projects were short documentary films produced in DEFA’s Educational Film Department, where she met her husband, director Heiner Carow. When the department closed in 1953, she began a productive training period as assistant to the prolific film editor Putty E. Krafft. By January 1954, Carow was an accomplished professional and, two years later, she moved to the DEFA Studio for Feature Films, where she remained for the rest of her career.

At the DEFA Studio for Feature Films, Carow worked with many renowned directors, including Konrad Wolf, Gerhard Klein, Heiner Carow and Frank Beyer. Evelyn and Heiner Carow’s professional partnership began in 1953, with the short educational film Ein Schritt weiter, and continued until Heiner Carow’s death in 1997. The duo is credited with some of the most important feature film productions in East German film history, including several films about personal relationships, marriage, sexuality and individual self-fulfillment: the cult classic, Die Legende von Paul und Paula; the tragic story of a young married couple, Bis dass der Tod euch scheidet; the first and only GDR feature film about homosexuality, Coming Out; and the Wende-period film, The Mistake, about a German-German love affair. They also worked together on the film Die Russen kommen, which was banned during production in 1968 and only reconstructed and released in 1987.

As of 1957, Carow also maintained a remarkable collaboration with director Gerhard Klein. Klein noticed the young film editor shortly after her arrival at the Feature Film Studio and recruited her to edit Berlin – Ecke Schönhauser, the third of four Berlin films he made with scriptwriter Wolfgang Kohlhaase. After the success of this film, Klein worked exclusively with Carow as his editor. In 1966, Klein and Carow experienced the harsh censorship of the 11th Plenum, when the fourth Berlin film, Berlin um die Ecke, was banned after officials saw the rough cut. This rough cut would not be screened until 1987, when the GDR State Film Archive mounted a retrospective of films on Berlin; three years later, Carow and Kohlhaase edited the rough cut for the film’s 1990 theatrical release.

Spur der Steine, a film Carow worked on with director Frank Beyer, was also sidelined by the cultural crackdown after the 11th Plenum; it was removed from theaters shortly after its release, not to screen again until after the fall of the Berlin Wall, 25 years later. Carow also teamed up with director Konrad Wolf. Their first collaboration was on Wolf’s autobiographical film Ich war neunzehn. She continued working with him on most of his subsequent productions, especially those exploring the role of the artist and the individual in socialist society, such as Der nackte Mann auf dem Sportplatz and Solo Sunny.

The dismantling of the DEFA Studios shortly after German unification in 1990 also marked the end of Evelyn Carow’s career. She is recognized as one of the most important editors in East German film history, with more than 50 titles to her name.