ONE OF THE GREATEST DIFFICULTIES in understanding DEFA films lies in the temporal and cultural differences between their modern reception and audience responses at the time of the films’ production and release. In an article from the East German newspaper the Berliner Zeitung (November 3, 1988), Thomas Melzer discusses issues that are not raised in the rock documentary flüstern & SCHREIEN (whisper & SHOUT, GDR 1988), such as the lack of sufficient background and perspective given for some bands, including Chicoreé. This article betrays a dichotomy between ideologically inflected criticism directed at filmmaker Dieter Schumann and his team, on one hand, and a more subtle request that DEFA nonetheless continue to probe the GDR rock scene and its youth culture. As so often is the case, the implied progressiveness (or conservativism) of the journalist is at odds with the progressive efforts of the late-DEFA filmmakers. With a more retrospective and wistful glance at the GDR underground, Katja Hübner and Daniel Bax relay the post-Wende fate of the band Sandow in the (West) German left-leaning paper, die tageszeitung (June 12, 1999). Although Sandow and the GDR underground may be dead, “the journey full of longing, passion, and struggle will never end.

Thomas Melzer

“Some Questions Are Missing: whisper & SHOUT—A Rock Report from DEFA”

First published as “Manche Frage fehlte: “flüstern & SCHREIEN”— ein Rockreport der DEFA” in the Berliner Zeitung (November 3, 1988).

Translated by Michelle Sybert.

A feature-length DEFA (documentary) film about our national rock scene is out, shot over six months by the working group “document” under director Dieter Schumann. Four bands are presented and seventeen songs played (purely acoustically, not exactly a pleasure in the Colosseum Cinema); at the film’s center, however, is the lifestyle of the musicians and fans. The creators sought out their protagonists not in the more representative, though boring, middle, but at the interesting extremities of the scene: the well-established top stars (Silly) thus contrast with the ascetic “New-Toners” (Feeling B, Sandow).

Backgrounds Were Left Out

Chicorée should no doubt belong to this first category, but the celebrated Berlin band gradually broke up during the filming. This breakup might have been a stroke of luck for the film if it had succeeded in capturing the reasons for the split, a process that is, after all, hardly unusual in the rock business.