DEFA documentary
The propaganda films of the GDR government were mostly made in the form of documentaries, short films, mixed forms and serial non-fictional films. The DEFA-Dokumentarfilm studios, founded in May 1946 , as a central producer, had freedom for self-confident and critical directors in addition to their state responsibilities. This created a tension between the ideological task and the personal message of the documentarist. The entire work of the DEFA documentary "shows the gradual loss of illusions and utopias in a society that has been overtaken by reality," says film critic and journalist Hans-Jörg Rother.
Own traditions and genres also developed. The documentary filmmakers were permanently employed by DEFA and had the opportunity to shoot documentaries in 35 mm format. Many productions were designed as supporting films and were 15 to 30 minutes long. Some of them were also shown as main films in GDR cinemas. Between 1946 and 1992 the DEFA-Dokumentarfilm studios produced around 10,000 films.
The DEFA documentary filmmakers developed their very own visual style, which drew its effect from the poetic realism of cameramen such as Christian Lehmann and Thomas Plenert . This approach of the directors is also called the Babelsberg School of Documentary Film, because it is based on the training at the local film school. The representatives of this style included Jürgen Böttcher, Winfried Junge , Karlheinz Mund , Gitta Nickel , Kurt Tetzlaff and Karl Gass .
Self-image
The British documentary film director and producer John Grierson said of his work: “We are convinced that the authentic person shown in his actions, the authentic scenery, give the film better opportunities to interpret the contemporary world, offer the film a greater wealth of material ( than the feature film). This awareness of social responsibility makes our realistic documentary an intricate and difficult art, especially in a time like ours. ”This statement corresponds to the self-image of DEFA's documentary filmmakers.
history
Before the GDR was founded (1949)
The first employees of DEFA-Dokumentarfilm mostly came from the cultural film tradition of the UFA and were style-forming. One of the pioneers of biology documentation, Ulrich KT Schulz, began his work in the 1920s and worked for DEFA until the 1960s. The first DEFA documentary in 1946 was Unity SPD-KPD by Kurt Maetzig . After the propaganda of the Nazis, which had discredited documentary film in Germany, Maetzig called in 1945 "a return to the impartial, factual and truthful representation of social reality in documentary films and mass media". Logically, DEFA also took part in coming to terms with Nazi rule. It was created Never forget it - it's your fault! (1946) and Sachsenhausen death camp (1946). In this regard, the opinion was also expressed that this work should prove how former National Socialists made careers again in the Federal Republic.
In 1948 there was a conflict between DEFA and the cultural department of the SED Central Secretariat. As a result of the political orientation towards the East, there was a personnel restructuring of DEFA. This was made possible by the personnel sovereignty of the SED, which held the majority of the shares in DEFA via a holding company. In this political turn of 1948, the SED degraded "the film to the maid of politics". From 1948 Andrew Thorndike made films about political mass events, such as Always ready (1950) about the Germany meeting of the FDJ and friendship wins (1952) about the III. World Festival of Youth and Students in Berlin (East) . His methodological principle: "The documentary has to explain the socially objective level of the committed author who represents the progressive strength of society, the working class and its leading party". With this attitude, a political and artistic principle entered DEFA.
1950s
The early rubble and construction films in the style of Kurt Maetzig's Berlin under construction (1946) were replaced in the 1950s by films by Annelie and Andrew Thorndike , which served as propaganda for the five-year plan or to criticize West Germany . Examples of government-friendly compilation films that correspond to the ideas of the SED are You and Some Comrade (1956), Urlaub auf Sylt (1957) and The Teutonic Sword (1958). The film The Teutonic Sword Company names documents whose authenticity was questioned as early as 1957.
Instead of showing what it is like, it was about showing how the directors believe it should be. This attitude was also found in the production and protocol films. Largely emptied of the relevant social conflicts, technocratic problems came to the fore. Defective machines are restarted and factories are built. The films propagated the socialist structure and ignored undesirable developments. There was a non-specific promotion of sympathy for the system as a whole. The documentaries dealt with the topics of self-portrayal of people's democracy, anti-fascism , anti-imperialism and industrial production. In 1959 a censored jubilee film was produced for the 10th anniversary of the founding of the GDR: That a good Germany flourishes by Joop Huiskens.
1960s
Films like When I first go to school (Winfried Junge, 1961), After a year - observations in 1st grade (W. Junge, 1962) and after work (K. Gass, 1963/64) were films that made everyday life in of the GDR and tried to depict the changes in society through small events. The goodwill and harmlessness in GDR documentaries only changed with the liberalization of cultural policy at the beginning of the Honecker era. After the building of the Wall and the consolidation of the GDR, the first signs of a change in style emerged, as had happened somewhat earlier and more radically in Western documentary films with American direct cinema and French Cinéma Vérité. Newly developed, small and light 16 mm handheld cameras and synchronous recording devices made the film team flexible. Jürgen Böttcher was a pioneer of this new style and shaped the documentary genre in the GDR through his films. His first major films were Ofenbauer (1962), Stars (1963), Barefoot and Without a Hat (1965) and The Secretary (1967). In portrait films such as Three of Many (1961) or Washerwomen (1972) he pointed out the discrepancy between official standards and individual experiences with growing skepticism. In his films, Böttcher showed people who defied conventions that the films allowed such open language. When documentary filmmakers switched to everyday observation in the mid-1960s, social contradictions and conflicts also increasingly came into their focus. Criticism of the rule of the party and state bureaucracy remained taboo. Associated with this were restrictions on artistic design.
Volker Koepp also developed a similar style. He managed to break taboos that could be observed without his films falling victim to censorship. Karl Gass, one of the most influential authors of DEFA documentary films, illustrated the change in documentary film by developing his own film work. Had he in 1953 with the film turbine rotated a hymn to the "heroes of labor" and the recovery of production, the wide acclaim was, it was his film Feierabend (1963-64), an observational study of the dismal diversion of East German workers after the end , panned by the official GDR criticism . The last major project of the 1960s, October came ... (1970), was also directed by Karl Gass.
1970s
In the 1970s and 80s, various forms of mixing documentation and interviews prevailed at DEFA, which took back the author's comments and allowed people to have their say. The most important documentary filmmakers in the GDR who dedicated themselves to this style were Karl Gass , Jürgen Böttcher , Winfried Junge, Karlheinz Mund , Gitta Nickel, Richard Cohn-Vossen , Volker Koepp , Walter Heynowski and Gerhard Scheumann . This included the long-term observations by Winfried Junge and Volker Koepp: In his film cycle Die Kinder von Golzow (1961-2006), Junge reported on a school class in the village of Golzow (Oderbruch) and the careers of individual children since they started school. Similar to Junge, Volker Koepp made his contribution to the DEFA documentary with his Wittstock films Mädchen in Wittstock (1975) and Wieder in Wittstock (1976) (further documentaries: 1978, 1984, 1994, 1997). He created a group portrait of young women workers, whose development he followed from the beginning of the 1970s until the reunification and the liquidation and closure of their factory. After this company was privatized, the camera team was no longer allowed to enter. Richard Cohn-Vossen accompanied a working-class family from Ilmenau. Workers' family in Ilmenau (1977) remained unpublished, presumably because Cohn-Vossen signed a resolution in 1976 against the expatriation of Wolf Biermann.
1980s
Jürgen Böttcher and Volker Koepp were the central characters in the documentary film in the 1980s. Winfried Junge joined the two great documentary filmmakers in 1982 with the premiere of CVs . Other critical observers of everyday life in the GDR were Karlheinz Mund, Kurt Tetzlaff, Eduard Schreiber and Andreas Voigt , Günter Jordan , Roland Steiner , Joachim Tschirner as well as Petra Tschörtner and Helke Misselwitz . Until then, there was only Gitta Nickel besides Annelie Thorndike, who often addressed problems in her films, but stayed on the official line. Petra Tschörtner first caught on with her thesis Behind the Windows in May 1984. 1989 was the year of transition. The last films controlled by the SED, some of which were withheld for a time, and the first independent productions came out. Films about the turnaround were Leipzig im Herbst (1989) by Gerd Kroske and Andreas Voigt , and Imbiss Spezial (1989) by Thomas Heise . Roland Steiner says at the end of his film Our Children (1989): “This film is a plea for listening, wanting to understand, speaking openly before it's too late.” At the beginning he said: “But there are people who make theirs looking away. "Thomas Heise returned in 2012 with the presence to its tradition of films about the work back.
1990s
The turnaround brought a boost in productivity. A total of 75 documentaries for the cinema are listed for the years 1990 to 1992. The topics of these so-called DEFA turnaround films were the state security of the GDR and the last days of the wall. Thomaus Heise received international attention with his Stau (1992), a film about young right-wing extremists in East Germany. During this phase, the Treuhand took over the DEFA-Dokumentarfilm studio. Leo Kirch showed interest and the bosses changed. In June 1997 the DEFA documentary was privatized. The DEFA Foundation , established by the Federal Republic of Germany on December 15, 1998, took on the task of preserving the tradition of documentary film in the GDR.
German-Soviet encounters
In the DEFA documentary, the occupation with the Soviet armed forces stationed in the GDR played only a subordinate role. The few films in which the encounters between Germans and members of the Soviet garrisons were the subject matter felt obliged to promote international understanding. Gitta Nickels We understand each other (1965) presents a German-Soviet kindergarten in Berlin in which the children grow up bilingually. In Then my heart jumps (1966) she accompanies the song and dance ensemble of the Soviet armed forces on their tour through the GDR. Vera came with the spring blossoms (1980) portrays a former Russian fighter pilot who came to destroyed Berlin in 1945. Other documentaries, such as And When I Came Over the Border (1985), deal with the Second World War.
working conditions
Documentarists were permanently employed by DEFA and had time for research. Several productions were not approved or were cut during acceptance. Total bans on films were rarer, especially not with the consequences, as with the feature film, that some directors could not continue working for years or had to end their careers entirely.
The small freedoms that the GDR documentary film gradually fought for in the 1980s were more perceived than the restrictions. Previous taboo topics, such as alcoholism in the film Dependent (1983), environmental destruction caused by industrialization in Memories of a Landscape (1983), and intellectual disabilities in the documentation Eisenbahnerfamilie (1984) became subjects of films. In Tag für Tag (1979), Koepp observed a self-confident worker who looked after young people in prison and who was lesbian. The result was the first portrait of a lesbian woman in the DEFA documentary. The greatest of these freedoms was the possibility of cultivating a quiet, unobtrusive style of observation that takes people in front of the camera seriously, leaves them their secrets and ambivalences, does not take them over ideologically. The state afforded these documentaries, especially because of the positive echo from abroad.
DEFA documentaries (selection)
Individual films can be researched in the holdings of the Deutsche Kinemathek . The following table shows a selection:
literature
- Peter Zimmermann: Deutschlandbilder-Ost: DEFA documentaries from the post-war period to reunification. Constance 1995.
Web links
- Literature on the DEFA documentary in the holdings of the German National Library.
Individual evidence
- ^ DEFA - Foundation - Wochenschau / Documentary. In: www.defa-stiftung.de. Retrieved August 19, 2015 .
- ↑ Insights into the reality of life in the GDR through documentary films by DEFA. (PDF) Gebhard Moldenhauer, Volker Steinkopff, 2001, accessed on August 20, 2015 .
- ^ Richard Ritterbusch: defa-dokfilm - Welcome to our forum. In: www.defa-dokfilm.de. Retrieved August 19, 2015 .
- ^ DOK-Leipzig Talk: The masters of the DEFA camera in conversation. (No longer available online.) In: www.dok-leipzig.de. Archived from the original on July 4, 2015 ; Retrieved August 20, 2015 . Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
- ↑ Documentary | H-Soz cult. In: www.hsozkult.de. Retrieved August 20, 2015 .
- ^ Richard Ritterbusch: Documentary. In: www.defa-dokfilm.de. Retrieved August 19, 2015 .
- ↑ a b c d The DEFA documentary | Topics | filmportal.de. In: www.filmportal.de. Retrieved August 19, 2015 .
- ↑ Peter Zimmermann: History is made! For the construction of historical images in documentaries and television documentaries. (PDF) (No longer available online.) 1999, archived from the original on March 4, 2016 ; Retrieved August 20, 2015 . Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
- ^ Film in Germany: Documentary. In: www.politische-bildung-brandenburg.de. Retrieved August 20, 2015 .
- ^ ARTE: The Holocaust in German Film - Between Remembrance and Instrumentalization. (No longer available online.) In: The Holocaust in German Film - Between Remembrance and Instrumentalization | Holocaust | de - ARTE. Archived from the original on September 23, 2015 ; Retrieved August 20, 2015 . Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
- ↑ a b c Filmmuseum Potsdam Black and white and color: DEFA documentary films 1946 - 92. (No longer available online.) In: www.filmmuseum-potsdam.de. Archived from the original on September 24, 2015 ; Retrieved August 20, 2015 . Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
- ↑ DEFA forged documents . In: The time . February 13, 1959 ( zeit.de [accessed August 20, 2015]).
- ^ Documentaries by Barbare and Winfried Junge. In: Retrospective DEFA documentary film. Retrieved August 20, 2015 .
- ↑ Bayerischer Rundfunk: The children of Golzow: Biographies | BR.de. (No longer available online.) Archived from the original on February 1, 2016 ; Retrieved August 20, 2015 .
- ^ CVs - The children of Golzow. (No longer available online.) In: www.kinder-von-golzow.de. Archived from the original on September 18, 2015 ; Retrieved August 20, 2015 . Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
- ↑ Berliner Morgenpost - Berlin: "Camera off" for the saga about the children of Golzow. In: www.morgenpost.de. Retrieved August 20, 2015 .
- ^ Ilmenau in GDR times: City Museum shows restored documentary film. (No longer available online.) Archived from the original on March 4, 2016 ; Retrieved August 20, 2015 . Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
- ↑ taz: track down contradictions. (No longer available online.) In: www.taz.de. Archived from the original on September 24, 2015 ; Retrieved August 20, 2015 . Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
- ↑ PRESENT (2012) «Thomas Heise. In: heise-film.de. Retrieved August 20, 2015 .
- ^ Film: German-Soviet encounters in the Defa documentary. Retrieved August 20, 2015 .
- ↑ See you after 30 years. In: www.aktion-mensch.de. Retrieved August 20, 2015 .
- ^ Philipp Dudek: Our children. (No longer available online.) In: www.dudek-info.de. Archived from the original on March 4, 2016 ; Retrieved August 20, 2015 . Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
