by bcblessing | Mar 31, 2014 | Benita Blessing, Education, Films, GDR, History, Uncategorized
In the East German (DEFA) 1962 fairy tale film Little Red Riding Hood (Rotkäppchen, dir. Götz Friedrich), we meet some of Red Riding Hood’s friends – and enemies. Her best pals are the ever-worried Rabbit and the clumsy and rather childish Bear. The Big Bad Wolf...
by bcblessing | Jan 23, 2014 | Benita Blessing, Education, Films, GDR, History, University of Vienna
The phrase “Nazi fairy tale films” seems like either a bad joke, or else yet another area that Nazis turned into propaganda. Yet, Nazi film adaptations of the Grimm Brothers’ fairy tales represent important examples of children’s films in...
by bcblessing | Oct 27, 2013 | Benita Blessing, Education, Films, GDR, History, Uncategorized
Empty filmic spaces tell us as much about life and politics in East Germany as do the movies that made it to the Big Screen. I have often wondered, for instance, why the socialist film production company DEFA never made a live-action film based on “Hansel and...
by bcblessing | Oct 9, 2013 | Films
Of all of the post-World War II films that addressed the problems of orphaned children, the Hungarian film Valahol Európában (Somewhere in Europe, also known as It Happened in Europe, 1947) elicited the most shocked public outcry about the youngest victims of the war....
by bcblessing | Sep 12, 2013 | Benita Blessing, Education, Films, GDR, History, Uncategorized
What is it about youth on the verge of disaster that makes for such compelling films? The best part of them, of course, comes with the inevitable sacrifice of one of the young protagonists, preferably a suicide or murder that – although useless for the...
