DEFA
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Formation | 17 May 1946 |
---|---|
Dissolved | 1992 |
Headquarters | East Berlin |
Location |
DEFA (Deutsche Film-Aktiengesellschaft) was the state-owned film studio of the
Since 2019, DEFA's film heritage has been made accessible and licensable on the PROGRESS archive platform.[1]
History
DEFA was founded in Spring 1946 in the
Headquartered in
On 14 July 1947, the company officially moved its headquarters to the Bablesberg Studio, and on 13 November 1947, the company's "stock" was taken over by the Socialist Unity Party or SED, which had originally capitalized DEFA, and pro-Soviet German individuals. Soviets Ilya Trauberg and Aleksandr Wolkenstein joined Lindemann, Bergmann and Volkmann on the board of directors, and a committee was established under the auspices of the Socialist Unity Party to review projects and screen rushes.[citation needed]
In July 1948, Lindemann was dismissed from the board of directors because of alleged "financial irregularities" and replaced briefly by Walter Janka. In October 1948, the SED was instrumental in replacing Janka, Volkmann and Bergmann as corporate directors with official party members Wilhelm Meissner, Alexander Lösche and Grete Keilson. In December, the death of Trauberg and the resignation of Wolkenstein resulted in two more Soviets in their stead, Aleksandr Andriyevsky and Leonid Antonov.[citation needed]
In 1948, the division of Germany into zones controlled by the Soviet Union and by the Western Allies came into effect. The SED eventually became openly
As
In 1992, after German reunification, DEFA was officially dissolved and its combined studios sold to a French conglomerate,
In October 2005, the Museum of Modern Art in New York City hosted a two-week DEFA festival.[9]
Das Stacheltier
Das Stacheltier is a satirical series of short films that was produced in East Germany by the DEFA Film Studios from 1953[10] to 1964.[11] The short films were meant to be shown in film theatres preceding the newsreel and the main feature. The only feature film in the series was the silent film Der junge Engländer directed by Gottfried Kolditz in 1958.
Many well-known East German directors and actors contributed to the film series, including Frank Beyer, Erwin Geschonneck, Gisela May, Rudolf Wessely, Otto Tausig, Peter Sturm, Rolf Herricht and Heinz Schubert.
In 2019, Progress was acquired by LOOKSfilm. Since April 1, 2019, the entire film heritage of the GDR has been made internationally accessible and licensable on the Progress Film archive platform.[12]
DEFA Film studios
- DEFA-Studio für Spielfilme in Potsdam-Babelsberg (studio for feature films)
- DEFA-Studio für Trickfilme in Dresden (studio for animated films)
- DEFA-Studio für populärwissenschaftliche Filme in Potsdam, Alt-Nowawes (studio for educational films)
- DEFA-Studio für Wochenschau und Dokumentarfilme in Berlin (studio for news reels and documentation films)
- DEFA-Studio für Synchronisation in Berlin-Johannisthal (studio for dubbing)
- DEFA-Kopierwerke in Berlin-Köpenick and Berlin-Johannisthal (factory for movie copying)
- DEFA-Außenhandel in Berlin (foreign trade)
See also
- Babelsberg Studio
- Broadcasting in East Germany
- Category: East German actors
- Category: East German films
- Culture of East Germany
- DEFA Film Library
- List of East German films
- Ostern
- PROGRESS
Bibliography
- Allan, Sean; Sandford, John, (eds.) DEFA: East German Cinema, 1946–1992. New York and Oxford, Berghahn Books, 1999
- Allan, Sean; Heiduschke, Sebastian (eds.) Re-Imagining DEFA: East German Cinema in its National and Transnational Contexts. Berghahn Books, 2016
- Bergfelder, Tim; Carter, Erica & Goektuerk, Deniz, (eds.) The German Cinema Book. Berkeley: BFI/University of California Press. 2003.
- Berghahn, Daniela. Hollywood behind the Wall: the Cinema of East Germany. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2005
- Beyer, Frank. Wenn der Wind sich dreht: Meine Filme, mein Leben. Econ. 2001.
- Elsaesser, Thomas & Wedel, Michael. The BFI Companion to German Cinema. London: British Film Institute, 1999.
- Habel, F.-B. Das grosse Lexikon der DEFA-Spielfilme, Berlin: Schwarzkopf & Schwarzkopf, 2000
- Heiduschke, Sebastian. East German Cinema: DEFA and Film History. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013.
- Naughton, Leonie. That Was the Wild East: Film Culture, Unification, and the `New´ Germany. Ann Arbor, 2002.
- Preuss, Evelyn. "'You Say You Want a Revolution': East German Film at the Crossroads between the Cinemas." In Celluloid Revolt: German Screen Cultures and the Long 1968, edited by Christina Gerhardt and Marco Abel, 218-236. Rochester, NY: Boydell, 2019.
- Schenk, Ralf; Richter, Erika (eds.) apropos: Film 2001 Das Jahrbuch der DEFA-Stiftung. Das Neue Berlin, 2001.
- Schittly, Dagmar. Zwischen Regie und Regime: die Filmpolitik der SED im Spiegel der DEFA-Produktionen. Berlin, 2002.
- Silberman, Marc; Wrage, Henning (eds.) DEFA at the Crossroads of East German and International Film Culture. A Companion. Berlin/Boston: De Gruyter, 2014.
- Wagner, Brigitta B. (ed.) DEFA after East Germany. Rochester: Camden House, 2014.
Film
- East Side Story, a documentary that discusses DEFA's musicals
References
- ^ "PROGRESS". Retrieved February 23, 2021.
- ^ "History". www.defa-stiftung.de.
- ^ "Die MÖRDER SIND UNTER UNS (1946)". BFI. Archived from the original on February 16, 2018.
- ^ Thomas Phelps, "Links wo das Herz ist" Archived 2010-06-17 at the Wayback Machine Justus Liebig University Giessen (October 27–28, 1997). Retrieved 29 November 2011 (in German)
- ^ "Die SÖHNE DER GROSSEN BÄRIN (1965)". BFI. Archived from the original on April 3, 2018.
- ^ "The Sons of Great Bear | DEFA Film Library". ecommerce.umass.edu.
- ^ "DEFA Stiftung — filmarchives online". www.filmarchives-online.eu.
- ISBN 9781571135827– via Google Books.
- ^ "Rebels with a Cause: The Cinema of East Germany". The Museum of Modern Art.
- ISBN 9783531190761.
- ISBN 978-3412150051.
- ^ "Digital Media Hub". www.progress.film. Retrieved 2022-08-04.
External links
- DEFA Film Library and Online Shop
- DEFA Foundation
- PROGRESS, the distributor of the complete DEFA film heritage
- Studio Babelsberg