Proletarian film

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The proletarian film , also known as folk movie called, is a movement in the German film history between about 1925 and 1933. The films of this movement try to make the grievances of Living and Working Conditions in the German working class clearly and call for solidarity with the labor movement on . These films were commissioned by the KPD , the SPD , trade unions and left-wing organizations. The most well-known production companies of proletarian films were Prometheus Film-Verleih und Produktionsgesellschaft GmbH , which mainly dealt with feature films , and Filmkartell "Weltfilm" GmbH , which mainly shot documentaries .

History of the proletarian film in the Weimar Republic

In the mid-1920s, through the example of the Soviet revolutionary film, the KPD recognized the possibilities of influencing public opinion formation through the medium of film. Since 1926 Prometheus has been producing silent films such as Jenseits der Straße ( Leo Mittler , 1929), but her first major success came with Mother Krausen's Journey to Happiness ( Piel Jutzi , 1929). Characteristic of this film was the realistic and nuanced portrayal of the Zille milieu during the global economic crisis . Prometheus' last sound film was Kuhle Wampe or: Who Owns the World? ( Slatan Dudow , 1932), on whose screenplay Bertolt Brecht had co-written. As in Mother Krausen's Journey to Happiness , the solidarity organization in the labor movement was presented in Kuhle Wampe as a way out of the hopeless living conditions of the workers.

The SPD, too, had proletarian films such as Brothers ( Werner Hochbaum , 1929) or wage clerk Kremke ( Marie Harder , 1930) produced through its own film company, Film- und Lichtbilddienst .

The history of proletarian film ended when the National Socialists came to power in 1933; Kuhle Wampe was one of the first films to be banned by the Nazis.

Renaissance in the 1960s

The proletarian film experienced a renaissance in the second half of the 1960s. Early examples are the documentaries by Klaus Wildenhahn ( Between 3 and 7 o'clock in the morning , observations about life in St. Pauli, 1964, and In der Fremde about a column of construction workers building a feed silo, 1967) and Erika Runge ( Why is a woman B. Happy?, 1968, which reveals 50 years of German history from the perspective of the working class). In Berlin after 1968, students at the DFFB build on these and other role models and, with (documentary) feature films, turn to the contemporary living conditions of workers and employees, which are largely neglected by the film industry and television. Dear mother, I'm fine , 1972, by Christian Ziewer and Klaus Wiese, was the first feature film of the revived proletarian film in the Federal Republic. Other films such as Die Wollands ( Marianne Lüdcke and Ingo Krati , 1972), Lohn und Liebe (also Lüdcke and Krati, 1974), Schneeglöckchen blühn in September 1973 and Der aufrechte Gang , 1975, both by Christian Ziewer, followed.

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