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DEFA Foundation
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 dire ...
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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 ...
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Babelsberg
Babelsberg () is the largest quarter (''Stadtteil'') of Potsdam, the capital city of the German state of Brandenburg. The affluent neighbourhood named after a small hill on the Havel river is famous for Babelsberg Palace and Park, part of the Palaces and Parks of Potsdam and Berlin UNESCO World Heritage Site, as well as for Babelsberg Studio, a historical centre of the German film industry and the first large-scale movie studio in the world. History A settlement on the small Nuthe creek was first mentioned in the 1375 ''Landbuch'' (domesday book) by Emperor Charles IV of Luxembourg, who also ruled as Margrave of Brandenburg since 1373. Then called ''Neuendorf'' (New Village) after its former West Slavic name ''Nova Ves'', it was shelled several times and was severely damaged during the Thirty Years' War. In the mid-18th century the new village of Nowawes was founded by King Frederick II of Prussia and settled with Protestant Bohemian deportees, predominantly weavers who as de ...
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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 ...
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Socialist Realism
Socialist realism is a style of idealized realistic art that was developed in the Soviet Union and was the official style in that country between 1932 and 1988, as well as in other socialist countries after World War II. Socialist realism is characterized by the depiction of communist values, such as the emancipation of the proletariat. Despite its name, the figures in the style are very often highly idealized, especially in sculpture, where it often leans heavily on the conventions of classical sculpture. Although related, it should not be confused with social realism, a type of art that realistically depicts subjects of social concern, or other forms of "realism" in the visual arts. Socialist realism was made with an extremely literal and obvious meaning, usually showing an idealized USSR. Socialist realism was usually devoid of complex artistic meaning or interpretation. Socialist realism was the predominant form of approved art in the Soviet Union from its development in t ...
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Monopoly
A monopoly (from Greek language, Greek el, μόνος, mónos, single, alone, label=none and el, πωλεῖν, pōleîn, to sell, label=none), as described by Irving Fisher, is a market with the "absence of competition", creating a situation where a specific person or company, enterprise is the only supplier of a particular thing. This contrasts with a monopsony which relates to a single entity's control of a Market (economics), market to purchase a good or service, and with oligopoly and duopoly which consists of a few sellers dominating a market. Monopolies are thus characterized by a lack of economic Competition (economics), competition to produce the good (economics), good or Service (economics), service, a lack of viable substitute goods, and the possibility of a high monopoly price well above the seller's marginal cost that leads to a high monopoly profit. The verb ''monopolise'' or ''monopolize'' refers to the ''process'' by which a company gains the ability to raise ...
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West Germany
West Germany is the colloquial term used to indicate the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG; german: Bundesrepublik Deutschland , BRD) between its formation on 23 May 1949 and the German reunification through the accession of East Germany on 3 October 1990. During the Cold War, the western portion of Germany and the associated territory of West Berlin were parts of the Western Bloc. West Germany was formed as a political entity during the Allied occupation of Germany after World War II, established from eleven states formed in the three Allied zones of occupation held by the United States, the United Kingdom, and France. The FRG's provisional capital was the city of Bonn, and the Cold War era country is retrospectively designated as the Bonn Republic. At the onset of the Cold War, Europe was divided between the Western and Eastern blocs. Germany was divided into the two countries. Initially, West Germany claimed an exclusive mandate for all of Germany, representing itself as t ...
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Stalinist
Stalinism is the means of governing and Marxist-Leninist policies implemented in the Soviet Union from 1927 to 1953 by Joseph Stalin. It included the creation of a one-party totalitarian police state, rapid industrialization, the theory of socialism in one country, collectivization of agriculture, intensification of class conflict, a cult of personality, and subordination of the interests of foreign communist parties to those of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, deemed by Stalinism to be the leading vanguard party of communist revolution at the time. After Stalin's death and the Khrushchev thaw, de-Stalinization began in the 1950s and 1960s, which caused the influence of Stalin’s ideology begin to wane in the USSR. The second wave of de-Stalinization started during Mikhail Gorbachev’s Soviet Glasnost. Stalin's regime forcibly purged society of what it saw as threats to itself and its brand of communism (so-called "enemies of the people"), which included polit ...
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Communism
Communism (from Latin la, communis, lit=common, universal, label=none) is a far-left sociopolitical, philosophical, and economic ideology and current within the socialist movement whose goal is the establishment of a communist society, a socioeconomic order centered around common ownership of the means of production, distribution, and exchange which allocates products to everyone in the society.: "One widespread distinction was that socialism socialised production only while communism socialised production and consumption." Communist society also involves the absence of private property, social classes, money, and the state. Communists often seek a voluntary state of self-governance, but disagree on the means to this end. This reflects a distinction between a more libertarian approach of communization, revolutionary spontaneity, and workers' self-management, and a more vanguardist or communist party-driven approach through the development of a constitutional socialist st ...
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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 ...
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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 ...
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Dailies
In filmmaking, dailies are the raw, unedited footage shot during the making of a motion picture. The term comes from when movies were all shot on film because usually at the end of each day, the footage was developed, synced to sound, and printed on film in a batch (and later telecined onto videotape or disk) for viewing the next day by the director, selected actors, and film crew members. After the advent of digital filmmaking, "dailies" were available instantly after the take and the review process was no longer tied to the overnight processing of film and became more asynchronous. Now some reviewing may be done at the shoot, even on location, and raw footage may be immediately sent electronically to anyone in the world who needs to review the takes. For example, a director can review takes from a second unit while the crew is still on location or producers can get timely updates while travelling. Dailies serve as an indication of how the filming and the actors' performances ...
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Ilya Trauberg
Ilya Trauberg (Ilya Zakharovich Trauberg) was a Russian director born in Odessa on December 13, 1905, who died in Berlin on December 18, 1948. Filmography Assistant director * 1927 - '' October: Ten Days That Shook the World'' Director * 1927 : '' Léningrad aujourd'hui'' - Documentaire * 1929 : ''The Blue Express'' ou ''Le Train mongol'' (''Goluboy ekspress'') * 1932 : '' Nous travaillons pour vous'' (''Dlya vas naydyotsya rabota'') * 1934 : '' Chastnyy sluchay'' * 1936 : '' Son of Mongolia'' (''Mongol Khüü'' ou ''Syn Mongolii'') * 1938 : '' God devyatnadtsatyy'' * 1941 : '' My zhdem vas s pobedoy'' * 1941 : '' Kontsert-vals'' * 1942 : '' Boyevoy kinosbornik 11'' Screenwriter * 1929 : ''The Blue Express ''The Blue Express'' or ''China Express'' (russian: Голубой экспресс, Goluboy ekspress) is a 1929 Soviet silent film, silent drama film directed by Ilya Trauberg.Christie & Taylor p.427 Cast * Sergei Minin as The European * Igor ...'' ou ''Le Train ...
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