Sean Allan is Professor of German at the University of St Andrews. He is co-editor (with John Sandford) of DEFA: East German Cinema, 1946-1992 (1999), and has published widely on the films of Konrad Wolf, Kurt Maetzig and Jurgen Boettcher, and on East German identity in post-unification cinema.Sebastian Heiduschke is Associate Professor in the School of Language, Culture, and Society, and Affiliate Faculty in the School of Writing, Literature, and Film at Oregon State University. He has published the monograph DEFA: East German Cinema and Film History (2013) and essays on the marketing, distribution, and fan cultures of DEFA film.

"Taken together, the essays [by a diverse group of international scholars] create a coherent whole representing the richness of film production before, during, and after DEFA (Deutsche Film Aktiengesellschaft), the state-owned East German film production company at the loose center of this [useful and compelling] collection." Choice

• List of IllustrationsAcknowledgmentsIntroduction: Re-Imagining East German CinemaSean Allan and Sebastian HeiduschkePART I: INSTITUTIONS & IDEOLOGYChapter 1. The State-Owned Cinema Industry and Its AudienceRosemary StottChapter 2. History and Subjectivity. The Evolution of DEFA Film MusicLarson PowellChapter 3. 'Fatal Attractions'. Modernist Set Design and the East-West Divide in DEFA Films of the 1950s and early 1960sAnnette DorgerlohPART II: NATIONAL AND TRANSNATIONAL CONTEXTSChapter 4. DEFA and the Legacy of Film Europe. Prestige, Institutional Exchange, and Film Co-ProductionsMariana IvanovaChapter 5. Betting on Entertainment. The Cold War Scandal of Spielbank-Affare [Casino Affair, 1957]Stefan SoldovieriChapter 6. 'Operacion Silencio'. Studio H&S's Chile Cycle as Latin American Third CinemaDennis HanlonChapter 7. Deconstructing Orientalism. DEFA's Fictions of East AsiaQinna ShenChapter 8. Transnational Stardom. DEFA's Management of Dean ReedSean AllanPART III: GENRE & POPULAR CINEMAChapter 9. Walter Felsenstein and the DEFA Opera FilmSabine HakeChapter 10. Dreams of 'Cosmic Culture' in Der schweigende Stern [The Silent Star, 1960]Sonja FritzscheChapter 11. The DEFA Indianerfilm. Narrating the Postcolonial through Gojko MiticEvan TornerChapter 12. Defining Socialist Children's Films, Defining Socialist ChildhoodsBenita BlessingPART IV: DEFA'S LEGACYChapter 13. DEFA's Last Gasp. Ruins, Melancholy and the End of East German FilmmakingNick HodginChapter 14. KLK an PTX. Die Rote Kapelle. DEFA's Antifascist Myth RevisitedSebastian HeiduschkeChapter 15. DEFA's Afterimages. Looking Back at the East from the West in Das Leben der Anderen [The Lives of Others, 2006] and Barbara (2012)Daniela BerghahnBibliography