23 December/Dezember 2024

New book/ Neues Buch: Hans-Erich Busch. Unmögliches machen wir sofort, Wunder dauern etwas länger. Bertz+Fischer, 2024.
Not at sea, but in film did Hans-Erich Busch find the fulfillment of his curiosity about the world. The trained steel shipbuilder from Mecklenburg became a production manager at the DEFA Film Studio for Feature Films. There, he worked with directing greats such as Heiner Carow, Rainer Simon, Günter Reisch, Günther Rücker, and Herrmann Zschoche. From Babelsberg, he ventured beyond: contract negotiations, preparations, and filming duties took him to Cuba, Vietnam, Japan, Eastern Europe, and later to Western Europe and the USA, working with François Dupeyron and Margarethe von Trotta.
Hans-Erich Busch recalls his childhood and youth, “people-owned” DEFA and international co-productions, his imaginative pragmatism, as well as the political and professional maneuvers before and after 1989. Above all, however, this is the account of a contemporary witness from the late DEFA years and the early years of German reunification, sharing encounters with people from all artistic, technical, and organizational disciplines who worked together to “make film.”
20 December/Dezember 2024

New book/ Neues Buch: Grisko, Michael, and Günter Helmes, editors. „Auferstanden aus Ruinen“: Planen, Bauen und Wohnen in Spiel- und Dokumentarfilmen der DDR. wbg Academic in der Verlag Herder GmbH, 2024.
Building, Planning, and Living in the GDR: Between the Burdens of War, a Planned Economy, and Utopia
Whether in DEFA feature films or DEFA documentaries, on East German television and its magazines, or in cinema newsreels: the themes of “housing shortage” and “housing construction”, and more broadly “building” and “construction sites”, were ubiquitous in the media landscape of the GDR. Even in East German amateur films or in a popular institution such as the “Television Theatre Moritzburg”, these topics were prominently featured. This was, on one hand, a reflection of practical necessity, as by the end of World War II, many privately used or public buildings had been entirely or partially destroyed. On the other hand, this media presence reflects the enormous ideological and symbolic significance of these issues. The reconstruction and the planning of a new, different state—consider, for example, the so-called “rubble films” produced even for the Soviet occupation zone (SBZ)—were a crucial component of the founding program of the GDR. It was particularly associated with concepts such as “new building cities” or “prefabricated housing” and realized in places like Hoyerswerda or Halle-Neustadt, where socialist ideas were made visible.
The present volume is dedicated to the visualizations of building and living in the film and television formats of the GDR. The introduction by the editors outlines historical and film-historical developments and presents the following eleven contributions by authors from Germany and Great Britain. These eleven essays are grouped into the sections “Documentaries and Faction”, “Feature Films”, and “Television Theatre”. Each contribution presents representative examples of the film and television discourse on housing and building. They focus on content-related, aesthetic-narrative, political, economic, and/or functional aspects. The volume enriches our knowledge of the history of DEFA film, East German television, and amateur filmmaking in the GDR with a previously neglected yet highly significant subject.
12 December/Dezember 2024
Alle deutschen Ausgaben von LEUCHTKRAFT zum Download verfügbar.
All German versions of LEUCHTKRAFT available for download.