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DEFA
DEFA (''Deutsche Film-Aktiengesellschaft'') was the state-owned film studio of the German Democratic Republic (East Germany) throughout the country's existence. Since 2019, DEFA's film heritage has been made accessible and licensable on the PROGRESS archive platform. History DEFA was founded in Spring 1946 in the Soviet Occupied Zone in eastern Germany; it was the first film production company in post-World War II Germany. While the other Allies, in their zones of occupation, viewed a rapid revival of a German film industry with suspicion, the Soviets valued the medium as a primary means of re-educating the German populace as it emerged from twelve years of Nazi rule. Headquartered in Berlin, the company was formally authorized by the Soviet Military Administration to produce films on 13 May 1946, although Wolfgang Staudte had already begun work on DEFA's first film, ''Die Mörder sind unter uns'' (''The Murderers Are Among Us'') nine days earlier. The original board of di ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Sons Of The Great Mother Bear
''The Sons of Great Bear'' (german: Die Söhne der großen Bärin; literally, The Sons of the Great She-Bear) is a 1966 East German Western film, directed by the Czechoslovak filmmaker Josef Mach and starring the Yugoslav actor Gojko Mitić in the leading role of Tokei-ihto. The script was adapted from the eponymous series of novels by author Liselotte Welskopf-Henrich, and the music composed by Wilhelm Neef. The picture is a revisionist Western, pioneering the genre of the Ostern, and emphasises the positive portrayal of Native Americans, while presenting the Whites as antagonists. It is one of the most successful pictures produced by the DEFA film studio. Plot In 1874, the U.S. government encroaches on the lands of the Lakota people. Mattotaupa, an Oglala Lakota man, gambles with Red Fox, a White criminal, in a saloon. When seeing he has gold, Red Fox demands to know its origin. Mattotaupa refuses, and Red Fox murders him. Mattotaupa's son, the young and fierce warrior ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Walter Janka
Walter Janka (29 April 1914 – 17 March 1994) was a German communist, political activist and writer who became a publisher. Janka is notable for having spent time incarcerated as a political prisoner under the rule of the Nazis and later imprisoned under suspicion of counter-revolutionary activities by the Supreme Court of East Germany, in both cases serving most of his sentence at Bautzen prison. Biography Early years Walter Janka was one of six children born to a tool and die maker called Adalbert Janka. He attended junior school from 1920 till 1928. Between 1928 and 1932 he undertook a type setting apprenticeship. In 1930 Walter Janka became an Organisation Leader, and then a Political leader of the Young Communists (KJVD / ''Kommunistischer Jugendverband Deutschlands'') for the Chemnitz sub-region. After his elder brother, Albert, had been murdered by the Nazis, Walter himself was imprisoned by the Gestapo. He was remanded to custody in Chemnitz and in Freiberg before ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Hans Klering
Hans Klering (8 November 1906 – 30 October 1988) was a German actor, director, voice actor, graphic designer and author. He joined the Communist Party and went into exile in the Soviet Union in 1931, returning to Germany in 1945. In 1946, he became a co-founder of DEFA, the East German state-owned film studio, as well as one of its directors and board members. Biographical details Born Hans Karl Scharnagl in Berlin, he apprenticed himself from 1921 to 1924, but at the end, was unemployed. Later, he worked on the docks and as a sign painter. In 1926, he joined the Communist Party of Germany. He was a member of several agitprop theater groups in Cologne and Berlin, including the ''Rote Raketen'' (Red Rocket), ''Blaue Blusen'' (Blue Blouse), and the Left Column. As the political situation in Germany worsened, Klering fled to Moscow in 1931, where he continued to work with the Left Column. He was later arrested as part of the so-called Hitler Youth Conspiracy.Thomas Phelps"Links w ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Murderers Among Us
''Die Mörder sind unter uns'', a German film known in English as ''Murderers Among Us'' in the United States or ''The Murderers Are Among Us'' in the United Kingdom was one of the first post-World War II German films and the first ''Trümmerfilm''. It was produced in 1945/46 in the Althoff Studios in Babelsberg and the Jofa-Ateliers in Johannisthal. The film was written and directed by Wolfgang Staudte. Plot Berlin in 1945 after Germany's defeat in the war. The former military surgeon Dr. Hans Mertens ( Ernst Wilhelm Borchert) stumbles down the street, drunk. He suffers from flashbacks of the war and has an aversion to people in pain, which prevents him from practicing medicine. Instead, he spends his days drinking. An artist and Nazi concentration camp survivor, Susanne Wallner (Hildegard Knef), finds him living in her apartment as she returns home. They reluctantly live together at first, then become friends. Susanne finds a letter to a Mrs. Brückner in the apartment and c ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Babelsberg Studio
Babelsberg Film Studio (german: Filmstudio Babelsberg), located in Potsdam-Babelsberg outside Berlin, Germany, is the second oldest large-scale film studio in the world only preceded by the Danish Nordisk Film (est. 1906), producing films since 1912. With a total area of about and a studio area of about it is Europe's largest film studio. Hundreds of films, including Fritz Lang's ''Metropolis'' and Josef von Sternberg's ''The Blue Angel'' were filmed there. More recent productions include ''V for Vendetta'', '' Captain America: Civil War'', ''Æon Flux'', '' The Bourne Ultimatum'', ''Valkyrie'', ''Inglourious Basterds'', ''Cloud Atlas'', ''The Grand Budapest Hotel'', ''The Hunger Games'', ''Isle of Dogs'' and ''The Matrix Resurrections''. Today, Studio Babelsberg remains operational mainly for feature film productions. It also acts as producer on German productions and co-producer on international high-budget productions. Since January 2022 it has been owned by TPG Real Estate ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Wolfgang Staudte
Wolfgang Staudte (9 October 1906 – 19 January 1984), born Georg Friedrich Staudte, was a German film director, script writer and actor. He was born in Saarbrücken. After 1945, Staudte also looked at German guilt in the cinema. Alongside Helmut Käutner, he was considered the only German post-war director of any standing who, after 1945, could look back on continuous artistic filmmaking far removed from Heimatfilm and the suppression of history. Staudte's films stood for politically committed cinema as well as for professional craftsmanship, for film art and (good) entertainment with a social claim. His most important work came in the ten years following World War II, in which he worked with the DEFA in East Germany. The main focus of his work was to highlight the limits of German national pride. His work in anti-Nazi films, such as ''Murderers Among Us'' (1946), was also a personal working-through of his film career under the Nazis (he acted in the anti-Semitic film ''Jud ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ufa Film Company
UFA GmbH, shortened to UFA (), is a film and television production company that unites all production activities of the media conglomerate Bertelsmann in Germany. Its name derives from Universum-Film Aktiengesellschaft (normally abbreviated as ''UFA''), a major German film company headquartered in Babelsberg, producing and distributing motion pictures from 1917 until the end of the Nazi era. The name UFA was revived by Bertelsmann for an otherwise unrelated film and television outfit, UFA GmbH. The original UFA was established as Universum-Film Aktiengesellschaft on December 18, 1917, as a direct response to foreign competition in film and propaganda. UFA was founded by a consortium headed by Emil Georg von Stauß, a former Deutsche Bank board member. In March 1927, Alfred Hugenberg, an influential German media entrepreneur and later Minister of the Economy, Agriculture and Nutrition in Hitler's cabinet, purchased UFA and transferred ownership of it to the Nazi Party in 1933 ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Althoff Studios
The Althoff Studios (german: Althoff-Atelier) were film studios located in Potsdam outside the German capital Berlin. The studios were constructed in 1939 by the film producer Gustav Althoff who controlled the independent company Aco-Film. The original building was a former restaurant, but Althoff soon expanded the site by adding a larger sound stage. The studios were located close to the film city of Babelsberg which was the centre of production during the Nazi era, used by large German companies such as UFA and Terra. The Althoff Studios catered instead to smaller, independent films such as those made under the Berlin Film banner. The studios were captured by the Red Army during the Battle of Berlin and were then used for dubbing Soviet films for release in Germany. After the Second World War they were located in the Soviet Sector and were used by Communist-backed DEFA film concern which would become the state-owned monopoly of East Germany. DEFA was officially launched in a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
East Germany
East Germany, officially the German Democratic Republic (GDR; german: Deutsche Demokratische Republik, , DDR, ), was a country that existed from its creation on 7 October 1949 until its dissolution on 3 October 1990. In these years the state was a part of the Eastern Bloc in the Cold War. Commonly described as a communist state, it described itself as a socialist "workers' and peasants' state".Patrick Major, Jonathan Osmond, ''The Workers' and Peasants' State: Communism and Society in East Germany Under Ulbricht 1945–71'', Manchester University Press, 2002, Its territory was administered and occupied by Soviet forces following the end of World War II—the Soviet occupation zone of the Potsdam Agreement, bounded on the east by the Oder–Neisse line. The Soviet zone surrounded West Berlin but did not include it and West Berlin remained outside the jurisdiction of the GDR. Most scholars and academics describe the GDR as a totalitarian dictatorship. The GDR was establish ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ostern
The Ostern (Eastern; , ''Istern''; or остерн) or Red Western was a film genre created in the Soviet Union and Eastern Bloc as a variation of the Western films that originated in the United States. The word "Ostern" is a portmanteau derived from the German word ''Ost'', meaning "East", and the English word "western". The term now includes two related genres: * Proper Red Westerns, set in America's "Wild West" but involving radically different themes and interpretations than US westerns. Examples include ''Lemonade Joe'' (Czechoslovakia, 1964), or ''The Sons of Great Bear'' (East Germany, 1966) or '' The Oil, the Baby and the Transylvanians'' (Romania, 1981), or ''A Man from the Boulevard des Capucines'' (USSR, 1987). These were mostly produced in Eastern European countries like East Germany and Czechoslovakia, rather than USSR. * Easterns (Osterns), set usually on the steppes or Asian parts of the USSR, especially during the Russian Revolution or the following Civil War, but ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Grete Keilson
Margarete "Grete" Fuchs-Keilson (21 December 1905 – 4 January 1999) was a German politician and official in the Communist Party of Germany (KPD) and the Socialist Unity Party of Germany (SED). Biography Margarete Schnate was born in Berlin on 21 December 1905, the daughter of a labourer. She attended ''Volksschule'' (elementary school) and ''Handelsschule'' (trade school) there. She joined the Young Communist League of Germany (KJD) in 1922, and the Communist Party of Germany (KPD) in 1925. She went to work as an assistant to Ernst Thälmann, the General Secretary of the KPD. In 1927 she married the graphic artist and journalist Max Keilson, who accompanied her as part of the 1928 delegation of the Central Committee of the Communist Party to the 6th World Congress of the Communist International (Comintern) in Moscow in 1928. The following year she became assistant to Georgi Dimitrov, the manager of Western European offices of Comintern, who was living in Berlin under the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
East Berlin
East Berlin was the ''de facto'' capital city of East Germany from 1949 to 1990. Formally, it was the Allied occupation zones in Germany, Soviet sector of Berlin, established in 1945. The American, British, and French sectors were known as West Berlin. From 13 August 1961 until 9 November 1989, East Berlin was separated from West Berlin by the Berlin Wall. The Western Allied powers did not recognize East Berlin as the GDR's capital, nor the GDR's authority to govern East Berlin. On 3 October 1990, the day Germany was officially German reunification, reunified, East and West Berlin formally reunited as the city of Berlin. Overview With the London Protocol (1944), London Protocol of 1944 signed on 12 September 1944, the United States, the United Kingdom, and the Soviet Union decided to divide Germany into three occupation zones and to establish a special area of Berlin, which was occupied by the three Allied Forces together. In May 1945, the Soviet Union installed a city gove ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
