Re-Imagining DEFA

East German Cinema in its National and Transnational Contexts
1. Auflage 2016
ISBN: 978-1-78533-105-3
Verlag: Berghahn Books

Buch, Englisch, 378 Seiten, Format (B × H): 152 mm x 229 mm, Gewicht: 549 g

By the time the Berlin Wall collapsed, the cinema of the German Democratic Republic—to the extent it was considered at all—was widely regarded as a footnote to European film history, with little of enduring value. Since then, interest in East German cinema has exploded, inspiring innumerable festivals, books, and exhibits on the GDR’s rich and varied filmic output. In Re-Imagining DEFA, leading international experts take stock of this vibrant landscape and plot an ambitious course for future research, one that considers other cinematic traditions, brings genre and popular works into the fold, and encompasses DEFA’s complex post-unification “afterlife.”

Autoren/Hrsg.

Allan, Séan

Heiduschke, Sebastian

Fachgebiete

• Geisteswissenschaften Theater- und Filmwissenschaft | Andere Darstellende Künste Filmwissenschaft, Fernsehen, Radio Filmgeschichte
• Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Geschichtliche Themen Kultur- und Ideengeschichte

Inhaltsverzeichnis

List of Illustrations

Acknowledgments

Introduction: Re-Imagining East German Cinema

Seán Allan and Sebastian Heiduschke

PART I: INSTITUTIONS & IDEOLOGY

Chapter 1. The State-Owned Cinema Industry and Its Audience

Rosemary Stott

Chapter 2. History and Subjectivity. The Evolution of DEFA Film Music

Larson Powell

Chapter 3. ‘Fatal Attractions’. Modernist Set Design and the East-West Divide in DEFA Films of the 1950s and early 1960s

Annette Dorgerloh

PART II: NATIONAL AND TRANSNATIONAL CONTEXTS

Chapter 4. DEFA and the Legacy of Film Europe. Prestige, Institutional Exchange, and Film Co-Productions

Mariana Ivanova

Chapter 5. Betting on Entertainment. The Cold War Scandal of Spielbank-Affäre [Casino Affair, 1957]

Stefan Soldovieri

Chapter 6. ‘Operación Silencio’. Studio H&S’s Chile Cycle as Latin American Third Cinema

Dennis Hanlon

Chapter 7. Deconstructing Orientalism. DEFA’s Fictions of East Asia

Qinna Shen

Chapter 8. Transnational Stardom. DEFA’s Management of Dean Reed

Seán Allan

PART III: GENRE & POPULAR CINEMA

Chapter 9. Walter Felsenstein and the DEFA Opera Film

Sabine Hake

Chapter 10. Dreams of ‘Cosmic Culture’ in Der schweigende Stern [The Silent Star, 1960]

Sonja Fritzsche

Chapter 11. The DEFA Indianerfilm. Narrating the Postcolonial through Gojko Mitic

Evan Torner

Chapter 12. Defining Socialist Children’s Films, Defining Socialist Childhoods

Benita Blessing

PART IV: DEFA’S LEGACY

Chapter 13. DEFA’s Last Gasp. Ruins, Melancholy and the End of East German Filmmaking

Nick Hodgin

Chapter 14. KLK an PTX. Die Rote Kapelle. DEFA’s Antifascist Myth Revisited

Sebastian Heiduschke

Chapter 15. DEFA’s Afterimages. Looking Back at the East from the West in Das Leben der Anderen [The Lives of Others, 2006] and Barbara (2012)

Daniela Berghahn

Bibliography

Über Autor(innen)

Allan, Séan
Séan Allan is Professor of German at the University of St Andrews. He is co-editor (with John Sandford) of DEFA: East German Cinema, 1946-1992 (1999), and has published widely on the films of Konrad Wolf, Kurt Maetzig and Jürgen Böttcher, and on East German identity in post-unification cinema.

Heiduschke, Sebastian
Sebastian Heiduschke is Associate Professor in the School of Language, Culture, and Society, and Affiliate Faculty in the School of Writing, Literature, and Film at Oregon State University. He has published the monograph DEFA: East German Cinema and Film History (2013) and essays on the marketing, distribution, and fan cultures of DEFA film.

Séan Allan is Professor of German at the University of St Andrews. He is co-editor (with John Sandford) of DEFA: East German Cinema, 1946-1992 (1999), and has published widely on the films of Konrad Wolf, Kurt Maetzig and Jürgen Böttcher, and on East German identity in post-unification cinema.