Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction
- 1 On Fools and Clowns or Refusal as Engagement in Two Final DEFA Films: Egon Günther's Stein and Jörg Foth's Letztes aus der DaDaeR
- 2 “Film Must Fidget”: DEFA's Untimely Poets
- 3 Absurd Endgames: Peter Welz's Banale Tage
- 4 Flight into Reality: The Cinema of Helke Misselwitz
- 5 The Extraordinary in the Ordinary: Andreas Voigt's Leipzig Pentalogy, 1986–96
- 6 Asynchronicity in DEFA's Last Feature: Architects, Goats, and Godot
- Filmography
- Bibliography
- Index
5 - The Extraordinary in the Ordinary: Andreas Voigt's Leipzig Pentalogy, 1986–96
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 March 2014
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction
- 1 On Fools and Clowns or Refusal as Engagement in Two Final DEFA Films: Egon Günther's Stein and Jörg Foth's Letztes aus der DaDaeR
- 2 “Film Must Fidget”: DEFA's Untimely Poets
- 3 Absurd Endgames: Peter Welz's Banale Tage
- 4 Flight into Reality: The Cinema of Helke Misselwitz
- 5 The Extraordinary in the Ordinary: Andreas Voigt's Leipzig Pentalogy, 1986–96
- 6 Asynchronicity in DEFA's Last Feature: Architects, Goats, and Godot
- Filmography
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
While many of the last feature films produced at DEFA in the final years experienced a much-delayed show of interest by audiences, documentary films often garnered immediate attention, as they functioned as reflective mirrors for the political and social upheavals of 1989. But like the feature films made between 1989 and 1992, the lasting value of these documentary films is only emerging years after the events they depict. Looking at Andreas Voigt's series of five documentary films about Leipzig from 1986 to 1996 from the perspective of twenty-five years after the fall of the wall confirms a statement by cinematographer Thomas Plenert at the Leipzig documentary festival in 1989: “I think it is important that a film retain its relevance for many years.” This unique pentalogy of films captures the changing mood from before the mobilization of GDR citizens—through their protests—and the ensuing dramatic changes, including the disappearance of the GDR itself. They do so directly, as they focus on the protests of 1989 and topics such as monetary union, restructuring of the social, economic, and legal system of the former GDR, and the effect on peoples' workplaces, among others. But more interestingly, the films reflect the changes in the country indirectly in their own changing foci, beginning with a film that was Voigt's diploma film for graduation from the film academy (HFF) Babelsberg and ending with a film jointly financed by a German public broadcasting station (MDR), state and federal film subsidies, and a private production company (A Jour Production).
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- Information
- Last FeaturesEast German Cinema's Lost Generation, pp. 172 - 202Publisher: Boydell & BrewerPrint publication year: 2014