With our this year’s retrospective “Film and Protest – Popular Uprisings in the Cold War” we look back at the resistance against Soviet regimes in the Eastern Bloc. Despite the danger of censorship and political persecution, there were courageous filmmakers in many countries who captured in picture what the rulers would have preferred to keep invisible.

22 Feature and Short Films from the Cold War Period

The seven programmes include subversive animated films to footage smuggled into Western countries and unusually candid films that could only be made as a result of a brief relaxation of censorship. The films range from the East German protests of 17 June 1953 to the “Prague Spring”, to the bloody struggles for independence in the Baltic states after 1990. The retrospective’s kick off will be on 9 October with three short films, shown free of charge at the main station in Leipzig.

By staging this retrospective we are also reflecting on our own history. Films which were not shown at our festival in the GDR period due to ideological reasons, are included in this year’s programme.

DEFA Matinee and Saxon State Archives Matinee tie in to this theme

With the film “Woe to the Vanquished – The Workers’ Uprising, 17 June 1953” (1990) by Andrea Ritterbusch in the DEFA Matinee, we are screening a cinematic recreation of the popular uprising in the GDR. The Matinee Saxon State Archive will contribute by reflecting critically on so-called “German-Soviet friendship” and its chequered history.

More information, also about the film programmes, can be found in our press release.

The Retrospective was produced in cooperation with the Cinémathèque Leipzig and the Hannah Arendt Institute for Totalitarianism Studies in Dresden. We would like to thank the Federal Foundation for the Study of the Communist Dictatorship in Eastern Germany, the DEFA Foundation and the Saxon State Archive for their funding and support of the film programmes.

Film Still: “Undefeated” (Poland, 1984), directed by: Marek Drążewski