defilmtv1-5, Exercise 3: Red Westerns and the afterlife of DEFA

Model answer:

DEFA made adventure films about Native Americans in the 1960s as a response to the West German Karl May films. 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. Both states made their own version of the same popular genre.

After 1990 the state studio ended. The agency that privatised state businesses took over DEFA's assets, the Babelsberg studio was sold to a French company in the early 1990s (check) and now works commercially, and the film rights were placed in a foundation, the DEFA Foundation, which looks after the archive and supports restoration and release.