Documenting Socialism

Seán Allan is Professor of German at the University of St Andrews and holds a Joint Research Professorship in Neuere Deutsche Literaturwissenschaft at the University of Bonn. His publications include Re-Imagining DEFA: East German Cinema in its National and Transnational Contexts (co-edited with Sebastian Heiduschke, Berghahn Books, 2016), Screening Art: Modernism and the Socialist Imaginary in East German Cinema (Berghahn Books, 2019), and Inspiration Bonaparte: German Culture under Napoleonic Occupation (Camden House, 2021).

“This impressive collection of scholarly articles charts the tensions and complexities of an East German cinematic genre not easily accessible to English-language viewers…. Highly recommended.” • Choice

• List of IllustrationsAcknowledgementsIntroduction: Documenting SocialismSeán Allan and Sebastian HeiduschkePart I: Studios, Systems and NetworksChapter 1. ‘Mountains of Material’: Gerhard Scheumann and the Cinéma Vérité Debate in the GDRMatthew BaumanChapter 2. The DEFA ‘Foreign Ministry Films’: Presenting the German Democratic Republic to the World, 1962-1990Thomas Maulucci        Chapter 3. Diary of the Ordinary Reinventing the Newsreel: DEFA Kinobox, 1981–1990Reinhild SteingröverPart II: Documentary AuteursChapter 4. The Archives Testify: The Compilation Films of Annelie and Andrew ThorndikeHelen HughesChapter 5. ‘How Far Can You Go?’ Everyday Lives in the Films of Kurt TetzlaffNick HodginChapter 6. Peter Voigt: Socialist Documentary and the Legacy of BrechtSeán AllanChapter 7. Critical Truths: Documenting Disillusionment in the Films of Helke Misselwitz, Petra Tschörtner, and Angelika AndreesJennifer L. CreechPart III: Transnational DocumentaryChapter 8. East German Documentary Films by and about SorbsAndy RäderChapter 9. ‘Are These Pictures a Deception?’ Socialist Self-Reflexivity in the Cambodia Trilogy of Studio H&SMartin BradyChapter 10. Polycentric Images of Africa in East German Documentary FilmSebastian HeiduschkeChapter 11. East Germany’s Anti-Racist Politics and Black Abjection in Documentary FilmPriscilla LaynePart IV: Documenting AlterityChapter 12. Ein Tagebuch für Anne Frank [A Diary for Anne Frank, 1958]: The GDR’s answer to Alain Resnais’s Nuit et Brouillard [Night and Fog, 1956]Elizabeth M. WardChapter 13. A Woman’s Work? Women Soldiers, Masculinities and Binary Panic in Documentaries of the East German ArmyTom SmithChapter 14. The Queer Cipher in East German Documentary: In Sachen H. und acht anderer [In the Matter of H. and Eight Others] and Queer Activist Super 8 FilmsKyle FrackmanPart V: The Presence of the Past. Reconstructing the Socialist ImaginaryChapter 15. The Socialist City and Utopian Temporality in Halle-Neustadt DocumentariesStephan EhrigChapter 16. The Rubble of History. Searching for the German Past in a European Present in Andreas Voigt’s Ostpreußenland [Tales of East Prussia, 1995] and Volker Koepp’s Kalte Heimat [Cold Homeland, 1995]Jason DoerreFilmographyIndex