Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Texas at Austin, 2006. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references.

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A travers l'étude des relations cinématographiques entre la France et la RDA, cette thèse met en lumière la manière dont Je cinéma constitua un espace de rencontre entre l'Est et l'Ouest. Initiés après 1945 par des professionnels du cinéma portés par un même engagement communiste, les échanges de films entre la France et la RDA se heurtent rapidement à l'actualité géopolitique et notamment à l'absence de liens diplomatiques officiels entre les deux États. Grâce à plusieurs figures de passeurs, des collaborations singulières aboutissent néanmoins, telles que la réalisation de coproductions, la diffusion de films de la DEF A à Cannes et dans les ciné-clubs et la participation régulière de Français au festival de Leipzig. Les relations cinématographiques franco-est-allemandes dépassent souvent le cadre binational et s'étendent à d'autres horizons. La Chine de Mao et la guerre d'Algérie constituent ainsi des espaces où se croisent les regards des cinéastes français et est-allemands. Si la France et son histoire inspirent plusieurs films à la DEFA, seuls deux documentaires français s'intéressent à la RDA, avant et après Mai 1968. Ce déséquilibre s'accentue encore à partir des années 1970. La reconnaissance officielle de la RDA par la France en 1973 s'accompagne de l'institutionnalisation des relations cinématographiques, qui simplifie la circulation des films de part et d'autre du Rideau de fer en même temps qu'elle en accroît l'asymétrie. Ce n'est qu'après la chute du Mur que la France s'intéressera davantage au sort de l'ex-RDA, en produisant plusieurs films sur l'après-1989 et en mettant la DEFA à l'honneur dans le cadre de rétrospectives. / Through the study of cinematographic relationships between France and the GDR from 1946 to 1992, this PhD thesis highlights how cinema constituted a meeting area between the East and the West. Initiated after the Second World War by film professionals sharing the same communist commitment, film exchanges between France and the GDR are quickly confronted with the geopolitical situation, in particular the Jack of official diplomatic relations between the two states. Thanks to several figures of conveyor, peculiar collaborations could succeed, such as the realization of co­productions, the diffusion of DEF A films in Cannes or in film clubs and the regular French participation in the festival of Leipzig. Franco-East-German film relations often go beyond the binational framework and extend to other horizons. Mao's China and the Algerian war thus constitute areas where French and East-German filmmakers look at. If France and its history inspire several DEFA films, only two French documentaries focus on the GDR, before and after May 1968. This imbalance increases even more from the l 970's onwards. The official recognition of the GDR by France in 1973 is accompanied by the institutionalization of cinematographic relationships, which simplifies the circulation of films on both sides of the Iron Curtain, while at the same time increasing its asymmetry. It is only after the fall of the Wall that France becomes interested in the fate of the former GDR, by producing several films about the post-1989 period and putting the DEFA in the limelight of festivals and retrospectives.

Thesis (doctoral)--Universität, Bonn, 2001. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 318-326) and index.

This study will explore how East German films released from the 1940s to the 1980s played a central role in both reinforcing and chipping away at the national foundational narrative of the German Democratic Republic. This narrative looked back at the memory of the Third Reich and classified communists as heroes, Nazis as villains, and the majority of Germans as dangerously apolitical while also emphasizing the contemporary Cold War division between the east and the west. This thesis argues that DEFA films utilized the memory of the Third Reich to support, question, and expand this dynamic foundational narrative which remained malleable and contested throughout the state’s existence.

This dissertation focuses on film co-productions of the East German film studio DEFA (Deutsche Film-Aktiengesellschaft) with East and West European partners. It revisits patterns of institutional and transnational collaboration during the Cold War in order to challenge the predominant cliché of the isolation of East European film industries. The project seeks to re-position East German cinema within evolving debates on European film, deriving its argument from archival research on production histories and contemporaneous press releases, as well as from correspondence and personal testimonials such as interviews with former East German and East European filmmakers. The discussion is structured around three categories that focus attention on the interplay between the East German studio’s co-production agenda and state-imposed film policy: cultural prestige, popular entertainment, and international solidarity. I devote a chapter to each category in my study, and show how co-productions, as collective enterprises at the intersection of national cinemas, allowed DEFA to compete for internationally renowned film stars and to re-appropriate Hollywood genres by forming multinational film collectives and sharing sets, talent, and production costs, while simultaneously negotiating complex economic, political, and market conditions in each host country. This project moves beyond previous approaches to East German film as European cinema’s ‘other.’ DEFA co-productions provide a privileged route into the examination of socialist film production as a state-controlled and ideologically compliant cultural domain, and, at the same time, as a venue for artistic collaborations that challenged the limitations of state censorship and sponsorship. Undoubtedly, East German and East European films were influenced by international developments and responded to them. Focusing on DEFA as a case study, I shed light on the negotiation of cultural policies not only within a discrete film studio, but also among the various institutions involved in filmmaking in Eastern Europe. / text

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The relation between memory and identity is significant, particularly if an identity-establishing entity such as a state has vanished. In the context of GDR memory, this pertains to the type of memory discourse: what is remembered, how, and by whom? What are the differences in the discourse about East German memory between the US and Germany? Based on approaches of the Aleida Assmann’s approaches to individual, collective, and cultural memory this thesis seeks to examine the notion and impact of archives in collective memory processes and to analyze the extent to which the medium of film as a concrete and abstract archival complex can represent a part of individual and collective memory. Therefore, I combine the notion of the archive – based on approaches of Benjamin and Foucault – with memory discourses, going beyond the archive’s material character. Furthermore, in my analysis I follow the media studies’ definitions of film as a material-based dualistic, communicative and semiotic system. The analysis focuses on the work of the DEFA Film Library at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, which is important for American utilization and circulation of DEFA films and the distribution of audiovisual images of and about the former GDR. The DEFA Film Library is the only archive and research center outside of Germany devoted to a broad spectrum of filmmaking from and related to the former GDR. The DEFA Film Library has been distributing DEFA movies and providing materials for media education since the early 1990s. In this thesis, I examine the multilayered role of the DEFA Film Library in US-East German sociocultural relationships, particularly with respect to its impact on raising awareness of East German culture, history and politics through public and academic film programming and exchange. Using the DEFA Film Library’s work as a case study, I analyze the political impact of film work amidst the challenges of preserving, circulating, and communicating the audiovisual memory of the GDR.

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