Revealing the Cracks in Communism
Two teenage punk girls back-comb their hair while they talk about hating school and running away from home; a wizened old woman who has just celebrated her 60th wedding anniversary confides that she married the wrong man; a single mother carries out dirty and repetitive tasks in a factory before speaking about her loneliness and the difficulties of raising her disabled daughter alone.
This is a film depicting women, young and old, frankly talking about their hopes and fears, their marriages, children and jobs. It wouldn't be so very remarkable were it not for the fact that the year is 1988 and this is communist East Germany. Helke Misselwitz's ground-breaking documentary "Winter Adé," or "After Winter Comes Spring," caused a sensation when it was first shown in the Eastern German city of Leipzig exactly one year before the fall of the Berlin Wall.
Now 20 years later, the German Film Archive has included her documentary in a retrospective series of Eastern European films dating from the last decade of the Cold War. On the surface the 15 films seem to have little in common. They range from Russian thrillers to surreal comedies from Bulgaria and Romania, from a Polish science fiction film to sombre documentaries and dramas set in the former East Germany. What unites them is the seismographic way they seemed to point to the fissures emerging in the societies they portray.
Curator Claus Löser trawled the cinematic archives of Germany and Eastern Europe in search of the films for the series and admits it was a tough job selecting the final 15. "It was really important to have this range of styles and genres, to show the entire spectrum of film. Not just official films but also films from the subculture," he explained to SPIEGEL ONLINE...
Read entire article at Spiegel Online
This is a film depicting women, young and old, frankly talking about their hopes and fears, their marriages, children and jobs. It wouldn't be so very remarkable were it not for the fact that the year is 1988 and this is communist East Germany. Helke Misselwitz's ground-breaking documentary "Winter Adé," or "After Winter Comes Spring," caused a sensation when it was first shown in the Eastern German city of Leipzig exactly one year before the fall of the Berlin Wall.
Now 20 years later, the German Film Archive has included her documentary in a retrospective series of Eastern European films dating from the last decade of the Cold War. On the surface the 15 films seem to have little in common. They range from Russian thrillers to surreal comedies from Bulgaria and Romania, from a Polish science fiction film to sombre documentaries and dramas set in the former East Germany. What unites them is the seismographic way they seemed to point to the fissures emerging in the societies they portray.
Curator Claus Löser trawled the cinematic archives of Germany and Eastern Europe in search of the films for the series and admits it was a tough job selecting the final 15. "It was really important to have this range of styles and genres, to show the entire spectrum of film. Not just official films but also films from the subculture," he explained to SPIEGEL ONLINE...