Themes & Genres
© DEFA Film Library at UMass Amherst
© DEFA Film Library at UMass Amherst
Films in this category range from poetic images that reflect on urban identities East and West, to arguments for the official East German perspective that the Wall was built in self-defense. Most tell stories about people living in this dynamic city at different points in time, from “rubble films,” to the divided city before and after the Wall. The history of Berlin in the 20th century is unlike that of any other city: during the Weimar Republic period in the “Golden ‘20s” it was a world center of modernism; with the Nazi take-over in 1933, it became the capital of Hitler's Third Reich; after WWII, virtually destroyed by war, the Iron Curtain of the Cold War was drawn through it, and the Wall was built in 1961; finally, in 1989 the East German democracy movement led to the fall of the Wall and the unification of East and West Germany. Most of the films in the DEFA Film Library collection