DEFA Indian film

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At the beginning of the 1960s, the GDR began producing DEFA Indian films . The protagonists were mostly Indians fighting against colonialism . Most of the stories take place in the later annexed territory of the USA . The term Western was frowned upon for a long time. While the Karl May films produced in the Federal Republic placed more emphasis on light entertainment, the DEFA Indian film focused more on a historically more precise implementation of the stories.

The films reversed the cliché conveyed from American and West German productions: while American westerns continued to portray the Indians for a long time as primitive savages who apparently attacked innocent white immigrants and had to reckon with just acts of revenge by the settlers or the army, and even in the West German Karl May films the fate of the indigenous people was only touched on in a simplified manner, the GDR productions told the stories from the perspective of the afflicted Indians. In the USA, it wasn't until the New Hollywood West, such as Arthur Penn's Little Big Man (1970) , that films came to the cinema that also showed a more realistic Indian image. However, in contrast to the DEFA Indian film, the Indians in the New Hollywood films were not the main characters.

In order to help the films to be successful, the DEFA Indian films relied on well-known and returning stars. While Pierre Brice played the leading role of the Indian Winnetou in the Karl May films , Gojko Mitić played the role of an Indian chief in almost all DEFA Indian films . The 16 DEFA films do not provide a direct coherent story. In almost every film, Gojko Mitić plays a chief from heterogeneous Indian tribes with different cultures and over a wide period of time.
Exceptions are the films Spur des Falken (1968) and White Wolves (1969), in which Mitić plays the Dakota chief Far-Spying Falcon , and Apaches (1973) and Ulzana (1974), in which he embodies the Apache chief Ulzana . Its interpretation differs significantly from the film adaptation of Robert Aldrich's No Mercy for Ulzana (1972). Mitić had his first experience with the representation of Indians in 1963/64 in the West German Karl May films Old Shatterhand , Winnetou Part 2 and Unter Vultures .

The content was not limited to the stories of individual Indian figures, but also dealt with topics such as the attempt to live together peacefully with the whites ( Osceola ) or life in the reservation ( fatal error ).

DEFA Indian films

DEFA group "Red Circle":

DEFA group "Johannisthal":

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Fritsch, Peter: Body images and staging in the DEFA Indian films The Sons of the Great Bear (1966), Spur des Falken (1968) and Ulzana (1974) . In: Society for Folklore (Ed.): "Cowboy & Indianer - Made in Germany" . Journal of Folklore in Rhineland-Palatinate, No. 31 , p. 164-169 .