Content area
Full Text
That Was the GDR - A History of the Other Germany
(Das war die DDR - Eine Geschichte des anderen Deutschlands) (1993)
Directed by: Anne Worst, Arnold Seul, Christian Klemke, Donat Schober, Gitta Nickel, Gunther Scholz, Lothar Kompatzki, Martina Koerbler, Uwe Belz, Wolfgang Schwarze
Distributed by First Run Features
www.firstrunfeatures.com
360 min
In the past several years, strong, cleverly made feature films on the former German Democratic Republic have collected international audiences and awards. Life under communist rule in the old Eastern Bloc states continues to hold strong interest for American audiences, particularly when recounted with such skill as in award-winning art house hits as Good Bye, Lenin.' and The Lives of Others (the latter winning the 2006 Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Feature).
Das war die DDR - Eine Geschichte des anderen Deutschlands (That Was the GDR - A History of the Other Germany) is an epic documentary, originally made for television in Germany. Made soon after the fall of the Berlin Wall, the 1993 series is now available with overdubbed English narration (done previously in 1998 for, one assumes, British broadcast). The film focuses on capturing a moment in time, an oral history of living in the German Democratic Republic, through interviews with East Germans from a broad range of social strata. Composed in seven sections by different directors, this documentary captures the unique perspective of a citizenship that watched its nation vanish into history. The seven sections, "I Was a Citizen of the GDR",...