DEFA

While West Germany was watching Heimat films and Edgar Wallace thrillers (Chapter 4), East Germany had a very different film industry: a single state-owned studio, DEFA, working at Babelsberg, answerable to the ruling party and expected to serve the aims of the state. It nevertheless produced films that are still watched, a few that were banned for years, and a stock of children's and fairy-tale films that Germans of both East and West watch every winter. This chapter looks at how DEFA worked, what it made and what became of it after 1990. Titles and dates are given from general knowledge and flagged where they should be checked.

A State Studio

DEFA (Deutsche Film-Aktiengesellschaft) was founded in 1946 in the Soviet-occupied part of Germany, at the old Babelsberg studios near Potsdam (Chapter 2), and after the East German state was founded in 1949 it became its state film studio. Its first film was The Murderers Are Among Us (1946), discussed in Chapter 4. The state paid for production, owned the studio, chose the subjects and controlled distribution.

• Aims. Films were expected to support socialist values, to teach and to entertain. The ideal was a cinema of the people, as opposed to what the authorities described as the commercial and escapist films of the West.
• Control. Scripts were approved by the studio and by state and party officials, and finished films could be changed or withheld.
• Output. DEFA is generally credited with several hundred feature films over its history (a figure around 700 is often quoted; check), as well as documentaries, newsreels, animation and children's films.

Within the Rules

Working inside the system did not mean that every film was propaganda. Many directors tried to make serious films about East German life, the Nazi past or ordinary people's problems, within limits that shifted over time. Some of the best-known are below.

1965: The "Rabbit Films"

In December 1965 a leading meeting of the ruling party launched an attack on cultural life, and DEFA was hit hard. About a dozen films that had been completed or were being made were banned or held back (check the number). The group is often called the Kaninchenfilme ("rabbit films") after one of them, The Rabbit Is Me (1965), directed by Kurt Maetzig, which was not shown until 1990. Another, Trace of Stones (1966), by Frank Beyer, was pulled from cinemas after only a few days, and also reached audiences much later.

The ban was a punishment for films that the authorities thought were too critical or pessimistic about life in the East. It damaged careers and cost the studio some of its most talented people. It is a good example of the limits on what film could say.

Children's and Fairy-Tale Films

DEFA's children's and fairy-tale films have had the longest afterlife. The studio made a series of lavish adaptations of folk and literary tales, which were shown on East German screens and are still shown on German television every year at Christmas. The best known international example is Three Wishes for Cinderella (1973), a co-production with Czechoslovakia, which is shown regularly in Germany and in other European countries in winter (check). Many Germans who grew up in the West know these films too, since they were later shown on all-German television.

Red Westerns

In the 1960s DEFA made its own response to the Karl May films of the West (Chapter 4): adventure films about Native Americans, sometimes called "Red Westerns" or "Easterns". They presented Native Americans as the oppressed side in a struggle against colonisation, in line with the state's ideas, and starred the Yugoslav actor Gojko Mitić, who became a star in the East. The first, The Sons of Great Bear (1966), was a hit (check). They are a clear case of the two German states making their own versions of the same popular genre.

Science Fiction and Other Genres

DEFA also made science fiction, such as The Silent Star (1960), an adaptation of a novel by the Polish writer Stanisław Lem, made in cooperation with Poland and other East European partners. The studio also co-produced films with partners in the Eastern bloc, which widened its audience and its resources.

After 1990

When the two German states united in 1990, the East German state studio ended. The agency set up to privatise state-owned businesses took over DEFA's assets, and the studio at Babelsberg was sold to a French company in the early 1990s (check). It operates today as a commercial studio, hosting international productions. The film rights were eventually placed in a foundation, the DEFA Foundation, which looks after the archive and supports the restoration and release of the films. In the United States, the DEFA Film Library at a university has long distributed the films with English subtitles (check).

Exercises

Next chapter: New German Cinema, which follows the generation that came out of the Oberhausen Manifesto.