Basement film

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Basement films or shelf films , after Kurt Maetzig's The Rabbit, I am also insultingly referred to as rabbit films , were unofficially called those films produced in the GDR that were not released for performance after their completion due to state censorship . They got their name because they were stored in the GDR State Film Archive and were not accessible to film scholars either. A large part of the cellar films comes from the years 1965 and 1966, when many cultural workers were hoping for political liberalization and dared to try socially realistic film material. These hopes were dashed with the XI. Plenary session of the Central Committee of the SED , as a result of which a number of films were banned, which is why they were also referred to as plenary films . Film scholarly bodies in the post-reunification era, such as the DEFA Foundation, on the other hand, predominantly use the term prohibited films .

The most famous of the more than 20 GDR cellar films is Frank Beyer's Trace of Stones .

history

Manfred Krug (left) and Egon Krenz (right) at the re-performance of Spur der Steine on November 23, 1989 at Kino International in Berlin

When the hope of a liberalization process arose in the GDR in the mid-1960s, a number of feature films went into production that dealt critically with everyday life in the GDR and turned against narrow-minded dogmatics without, however, leaving the world of ideas of socialism. At the 11th plenum of the SED Central Committee in December 1965, ideological hardliners prevailed and the films The Rabbit I Am ( Kurt Maetzig , 1965), Just Don't Think I'm Howling ( Frank Vogel , 1965) and The Spring Needs prevailed Time ( Günter Stahnke , 1965) was forbidden. Maetzig had drawn a critical picture of an opportunistic judge, Vogel portrayed a youth who opposed his hypocritical environment and Stahnke addressed incompetent leadership figures in the economy.

Subsequently, further bans related to the films Karla ( Herrmann Zschoche , 1966) about a courageous teacher, Berlin around the corner ( Gerhard Klein , 1965) about the Berlin working-class milieu, the comedies When you grow up, dear Adam ( Egon Günther , 1965) and hands up or I'll shoot ( Hans-Joachim Kasprzik , 1966) and the Ernst Barlach film The Lost Angel ( Ralf Kirsten , 1966). With Spur der Steine ( Frank Beyer , 1966) the filmmakers hoped to be able to overcome the censorship with the participation of the popular leading actor Manfred Krug . The film was shown at short notice, but withdrawn after staged protests in the cinemas on Ulbricht's instructions. The film year 45 ( Jürgen Böttcher , 1966) was also banned, although it did not make a political statement, but rather observed the wrong ways of a young man in Prenzlauer Berg in the style of the Nouvelle Vague .

Even later there were occasional bans on showing films in the GDR, for example for Heiner Carow's Die Russenommen (1968), for Iris Gusner's Die Taube auf dem Dach (1973) and for Rainer Simons Jadup and Boel from 1981, which, however, in 1988 but still came into the cinemas. After the fall of the Berlin Wall , the basement films were fetched from the archive, partially completed and reconstructed, and made accessible to the public at the beginning of 1990 at the Academy of Arts in East Berlin and on the occasion of the Berlinale .

List of GDR cellar and prohibition films

Situation in other socialist countries

In the other socialist countries, too, there was film censorship, albeit at different times and locations. In Czechoslovakia, for example, many of the films made in the so-called Czech New Wave of the early 1960s were prohibited from showing , including some by Pavel Juráček , Jiří Menzel and Věra Chytilová . After the crackdown on the Prague Spring by Warsaw Pact troops in 1968, this censorship intensified considerably, especially during the so-called “ normalization ”.

Examples from the Soviet Union include the 1967 film Die Kommissarin von Alexander Askoldow or the 1984 film Die Reue von Tengis Abuladze , which only came to the cinema and festival honors as a result of perestroika after 1987/88.

The most prominent Hungarian prohibited film is probably the film Der Zeuge [A tanú] by Péter Bacsó from 1969, which, although slightly censored, was shown for the first time in 1981 at the Cannes Film Festival , and again in 2019, now in full uncensored version.

Situation in Poland

Due to the comparatively large artistic freedom of his “Filmic Working Groups” [Zespoły Filmowe] , which emerged in the wake of the post-Stalinist “ thaw ” from the mid-1950s , in Poland - unlike in neighboring countries with more preventive censorship - numerous films could be produced that only began in the They were subsequently banned by the authorities, but were at least "in the world" because of this, and so some of them still saw the light of day even decades later. The following table lists the 26 longest banned Polish films, the majority of which are feature film productions:

Movie title Director production premiere Prohibited Years
Długa noc [The Long Night] pl: Janusz Nasfeter 1967 1992 25th
Ósmy dzień tygodnia [ The eighth day of the week ] Aleksander Ford 1958 1983 25th
Ręce do góry [ hands up! ] Jerzy Skolimowski 1967 1985 18th
Diabeł [The Devil] Andrzej Żuławski 1972 1988 16
Na srebrnym globie [ The Silver Planet ] Andrzej Żuławski 1976/87 1988 12
Zasieki [wire entanglements] pl: Andrzej Jerzy Piotrowski 1973 1983 10
Głowy pełne gwiazd [Stars full of stars] Janusz Kondratiuk 1974 1983 9
Pełnia nad głowami [full moon above their heads] pl: Andrzej Czekalski 1974 1983 9
Jej portret [your portrait] pl: Mieczysław Waśkowski 1974 1982 8th
Przesłuchanie [ interrogation of a woman ] Ryszard Bugajski 1982 1989 7th
Choinka strachu [Christmas tree of fear] pl: Tomasz Lengren 1982 1989 7th
Kobieta samotna [a single woman] Agnieszka Holland 1981 1988 7th
Wigilia [Christmas Eve] pl: Leszek Wosiewicz 1982 1988 6th
Stan wewnętrzny [The inner state] pl: Krzysztof Tchórzewski (reżyser) 1983 1989 6th
Wolny strzelec [The Freelancer] pl: Wiesław Saniewski 1981 1987 6th
Palace Hotel [Palace Hotel] pl: Ewa Kruk 1977 1983 6th
Przypadek [ Chance may be ] Krzysztof Kieślowski 1981 1987 6th
Matka Królów [Mother Król and her sons] Janusz Zaorski 1982 1987 5
Wielki bend [the great run] pl: Jerzy Domaradzki 1981/85 1986 5
Grzechy dzieciństwa [The Sins of Childhood] pl: Krzysztof Nowak-Tyszowiecki 1980 1984 4th
Indeks (Życie i twórczość Józefa M.)
[Study book (Life and work of Józef M.)] 		pl: Janusz Kijowski 1977 1981 4th
Niedzielne igraszki [Sunday games] Robert Gliński 1983 1987 4th
Wierna rzeka [The Faithful Stream] pl: Tadeusz Chmielewski (reżyser) 1983 1987 4th
Jak żyć [How to Live] pl: Marcel Łoziński 1977 1981 4th
Był Jazz [There was jazz] Feliks Falk 1981 1984 3
Concert [The Concert] Michał Tarkowski 1982 1985 3

literature

  • Christiane Mückenberger (Ed.): Predicate: Particularly harmful. Berlin 1990.
  • Ralf Schenk (Red.): The second life of the film city Babelsberg 1946-1992. Berlin 1994.
  • Günter Agde (Ed.): Kahlschlag: the 11th plenum of the SED Central Committee. Berlin 2000.

Web links

Ralf Schenk & Gudrun Scherp (editors); Johannes Roschlau (texts); Merle Bargmann & Philip Zengel (design): Online exhibition: DEFA prohibition films. DEFA Foundation , 2015 .;

See also

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Jörg Schweinitz: cellar film / shelf film . In: Thomas Koebner (Ed.): Reclams Sachlexikon des Films. 2nd Edition. Reclam, Stuttgart 2007, ISBN 978-3-15-010625-9 , p. 341 f.
  2. ^ Online exhibition: DEFA prohibition films. DEFA Foundation , 2015, accessed on May 17, 2019 .
  3. ↑ Cinematography w Polsce Ludowej 1945-1980 ; Redakcja Wydawnictw Filmowych ZRF, Warszawa 1980, pp. 173-177.