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31-696: DEFA was founded in Spring 1946 in the Soviet Occupied Zone in eastern Germany; it was the first film production company in post-World War II Germany. While the other Allies , in their zones of occupation, viewed a rapid revival of a German film industry with suspicion, the Soviets valued the medium as a primary means of re-educating the German populace as it emerged from twelve years of Nazi rule. Headquartered in Berlin ,

62-647: A portmanteau derived from the German word Ost , meaning "East", and the English word western . Two subgenres may be distinguished (although the terms may be used interchangeably): American Westerns were amongst the US films imported into the early Soviet Union. As a result, certain Soviet films at the time are seen to incorporate Western elements. For example, the image of the Western cowboy

93-451: A French conglomerate, Compagnie Générale des Eaux , later Vivendi Universal . In 2004, a private consortium acquired the studios. The films produced at the DEFA studios after World War II included approximately 950 feature films, 820 animated films, more than 5,800 documentaries and newsreels, and 4,000 foreign language movies dubbed into German, which were acquired by the privatized successor to

124-613: A former graphic designer, also designed DEFA's logo. On 13 August 1946, the company was officially registered as a joint-stock company ( German : Aktiengesellschaft ). By the end of the year, in addition to the Staudte film, it had completed two other feature films using the former Tobis studio facilities in Berlin and the Althoff Studios in Babelsberg . Subsequently, its principal studio

155-711: Is used to symbolize the United States and the West as a whole in the Soviet silent comedy The Extraordinary Adventures of Mr. West in the Land of the Bolsheviks (1924). Red Devils is a revolutionary action film that also borrows from the Western genre. As cultural restrictions tightened during the Stalinist era, however, Western-inspired films in the Soviet Union became few and far between. It

186-470: Is worth noting, however, that Stalin was an avid enjoyer of Hollywood Western films, and is argued by some to have desired the Western genre within the Soviet Union. 1957's Miles of Fire is one of the earliest examples of a Soviet Western as it was released years before the Ostern genre became formalized and prevalent. The Western genre saw a resurgence in the Soviet Union in the 1960s, largely resulting from

217-551: The Federal Republic of Germany (commonly known as West Germany), and on 7 October 1949, the Soviet zone officially became the German Democratic Republic (East Germany). Ownership of DEFA as well as all DEFA assets were transferred to the newly created state. On 23 June 1950, Sepp Schwab  [ de ] , a hardline Communist, was appointed director-general of DEFA. As socialist realism took hold at DEFA,

248-612: The Khrushchev Thaw . In 1962, the USSR allowed for the screening of certain US and foreign films. The Magnificent Seven , an American Western starring Steve McQueen, become the most successful of these films commercially, becoming an instant cult classic amongst Soviet moviegoers. The overwhelming popularity and commercial demand of films like The Magnificent Seven enticed Soviet filmmakers and state-run film institutions to experiment with Western elements in their own productions, resulting in

279-692: The " Democratic Bloc " (later the National Front ). In April 1946, the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD) and the Communist Party of Germany (KPD) were forcibly merged to form the Socialist Unity Party which later became the governing party of the GDR. The SMAD set up ten "special camps" for the detention of Germans , making use of some former Nazi concentration camps . In 1945,

310-617: The 1960s, DEFA produced the popular Red Western The Sons of the Great Mother Bear , directed by Josef Mach and starring Gojko Mitić as the Sioux Tokei-itho. This spawned a number of sequels and was notable for inverting Western clichés by portraying the native Americans as the "good guys", and the American army as the "baddies". In 1992, after German reunification, DEFA was officially dissolved and its combined studios sold to

341-736: The Allied victory. According to the Potsdam Agreement , the Soviet Military Administration in Germany (German initials: SMAD) was assigned responsibility for the middle portion of Germany. Eastern Germany beyond the Oder-Neisse line , equal in territory to the SBZ, was to be annexed by Poland and its population expelled , pending a final peace conference with Germany. By the time armed forces of

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372-488: The Desert (1970) stands out as the quintessential Ostern, with its release considered by some to usher in the "golden era" of Soviet Western film. Set in rural Turkmenistan, the film incorporates many elemental Western characteristics, namely wide shots of empty skies and nature, transportation via horse and leather saddle, and the lone stoic protagonist. The film quickly obtained a cult-like status, with multiple catchphrases from

403-910: The GDR has been made internationally accessible and licensable on the Progress Film archive platform. The DEFA Foundation is a non-profit organisation established by the Federal Government of Germany on 15 December 1998. It was established in order to preserve the films in the DEFA library, as well as the former East German film studios, and oversee their use for the public good as part of the national cultural heritage of Germany. It holds around 700 feature films; 450 short fiction films; 950 animated films; 2,000 documentary films; 2,500 serial films; 6,700 German language dubbed foreign films; various other films made after 1990, and various ephemera such as film posters and manuscripts. The foundation has also been making digitised copies of its films since 2012. In 2013,

434-702: The Native Americans as the heroes and the American Army as the villains, a motif inspired by highly successful German Osterns. These films were immensely popular among the East German audience, furthering the widespread German fascination of Native American culture (see Native American Hobbyism in Germany ). A considerable strain into the genre was added by Romanian cinematographers, which included adaptations of Fenimore Cooper stories, with many of them being co-productions with Western directors. White Sun of

465-623: The Silver Lake , West Germany, co-production with Yugoslavia, was seminal for the beginning of the era of German Red Westerns. The film prompted a highly successful series of Indianerfilme ("Indian Films") about Winnetou and others, produced by the East German DEFA studios. The East German The Sons of the Great Bear (1966) was a seminal Red Western that turned the traditional American "Cowboy and Indian" conventions on their head, casting

496-516: The Soviet Union, the excessive control placed by the state on authors of screenplays, as against other literary works, discouraged many competent writers from contributing to East German film. Screenwriters could find their efforts rejected for ideological reasons at any stage in script development, if not from the outset. As a result, between 1948 and 1953, when Stalin died, the entire film output for East Germany, excluding newsreels and non-theatrical educational films, amounted to fewer than 50 titles. In

527-555: The Soviet occupation zone consisted primarily of the central portions of Prussia . After Prussia was dissolved by the Allied powers in 1947, the area was divided between the German states (Länder) of Brandenburg , Mecklenburg , Saxony , Saxony-Anhalt and Thuringia . On 7 October 1949, the Soviet zone became the German Democratic Republic. In 1952, the Länder were dissolved and realigned into 14 districts (Bezirke) , plus

558-606: The United States and United Kingdom began to meet Soviet Union forces, forming the Line of Contact , significant areas of what would become the Soviet zone of Germany were outside Soviet control. After several months of occupation, these gains by the British and Americans were ceded to the Soviets by July 1945, according to the previously agreed occupation zone boundaries. The SMAD allowed four political parties to develop, though they were all required to work together under an alliance known as

589-636: The board of directors, and a committee was established under the auspices of the Socialist Unity Party to review projects and screen rushes . 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  [ de ] and Grete Keilson . In December,

620-425: The company was formally authorized by the Soviet Military Administration to produce films on 13 May 1946, although Wolfgang Staudte had already begun work on DEFA's first film, Die Mörder sind unter uns ( The Murderers Are Among Us ) nine days earlier. The original board of directors consisted of Alfred Lindemann, Karl Hans Bergmann, and Herbert Volkmann, with Hans Klering as administrative Secretary. Klering,

651-571: The creation of the Soviet Western. The Czechoslovakian comedy Lemonade Joe or the Horse Opera (1964) gained popularity amongst Soviet citizens and those in the Eastern Bloc. Though the film is largely a parody of the Western genre, its commercial success nonetheless furthered the familiarity of Western tropes within the Eastern Bloc and the general Soviet audience. Karl May 's Treasure of

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682-510: The death of Trauberg and the resignation of Wolkenstein resulted in two more Soviets in their stead, Aleksandr Andriyevsky and Leonid Antonov. 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 Communist , with a strong Stalinist orientation. On 23 May 1949, the Allies' Germany officially became

713-564: The definition of desirable and acceptable themes for films became narrower. In June 1947, a film writer's conference held in Potsdam produced general agreement that the "new" German cinema would disavow both subjects and stylistic elements reminiscent of those seen on German screens during, and prior to, the Nazi era. By 1949, expectations for scripts were codified around a small number of topics, such as "[re-]distribution of land" or "the two-year plan". As in

744-788: The district of East Berlin . In 1952, with the Cold War political confrontation well underway, Joseph Stalin sounded out the Western Powers about the prospect of a united Germany which would be non-aligned (the " Stalin Note "). The West's lack of interest in this proposal helped to cement the Soviet Zone's identity as the GDR for the next four decades. "Soviet zone" and derivatives (or also, "the so-called GDR") remained official and common names for East Germany in West Germany, which refused to acknowledge

775-558: The existence of a state in East Germany until 1972, when the government of Willy Brandt extended a qualified recognition under its Ostpolitik initiative. Ostern The Ostern ("Eastern"; Russian : истерн , romanized :  Istern ; or остерн ) is a film genre created in the Soviet Union and Eastern Bloc as a variation of the Western films. The word Ostern is

806-623: The film making its way into casual conversation. "Gibanica Western" was a short-lived term for the Yugoslav equivalent of the Ostern, more commonly known as partisan film and, sometimes, the Partisan Western. They were made in the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s, and were about the partisans in World War II . Gibanica is a traditional Balkan pastry, and the name of the genre is dubbed in an analogy with " spaghetti Western ". The Goulash Westerns are

837-643: The former East German film distribution monopoly, PROGRESS . In October 2005, the Museum of Modern Art in New York City hosted a two-week DEFA festival. Das Stacheltier is a satirical series of short films that was produced in East Germany by the DEFA Film Studios from 1953 to 1964. The short films were meant to be shown in film theatres preceding the newsreel and the main feature. The only feature film in

868-667: The foundation established the Heiner Carow Prize (for best German young film), which is awarded to films shown in the Panorama program of the Berlin International Film Festival . Soviet Occupied Zone The Soviet occupation zone in Germany ( German : Sowjetische Besatzungszone (SBZ) or Ostzone , lit.   ' East Zone ' ; Russian : Советская оккупационная зона Германии , romanized :  Sovetskaya okkupatsionnaya zona Germanii )

899-470: 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

930-467: Was an area of Germany that was occupied by the Soviet Union as a communist area, established as a result of the Potsdam Agreement on 2 August 1945. On 7 October 1949 the German Democratic Republic (GDR), commonly referred to in English as East Germany , was established in the Soviet occupation zone. The SBZ was one of the four Allied occupation zones of Germany created at the end of World War II with

961-534: Was the Babelsberg Studio built by Ufa in the 1920s. On 14 July 1947, the company officially moved its headquarters to the Babelsberg 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

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