Ulrike Krumbiegel in the role of Ena with a wooden figure of the goddess Sivas in the film “Sehnsucht”
Photo: © DEFA Foundation, Waltraut Pathenheimer
Films by Sorbs, for Sorbs, with Sorbs – that’s how you could describe the content of this opulent and richly illustrated anthology, which, in addition to everything about film history, also reflects a section of German history. At the same time, the book presents a phenomenon: Sorbian identities, that is, a small ethnic group in the middle of Germany in a modern mass medium that has long been overlooked and is now being snatched from oblivion by this encyclopedia. The monograph with contributions by Sorbian and German authors provides a lively overview of Sorbian filmmaking from the Empire to the present. 150 films are presented, the production conditions and the makers are described.
Lausitz was often only used as a filming location: for example in the small film rarity “The Stranger Bird” with the apt subtitle “A love tragedy in the Spreewald” and the then silent film star Asta Nielsen (1911, Urban Gad), who played with every Sorbian imaginable Folklore ingredients are handled: costumes, hoods, Spreewald barges, the many canals. During the Nazi era – in accordance with the Nazi racial ideology – everything Sorbian was suppressed, including the German-Sorbian bilingualism.
The black and white film “Struga – Pictures of a Landscape” (1972, Konrad Herrmann) is the first GDR film to deal with the Sorbs’ loss of homeland due to brown coal mining in Lusatia. Konrad Herrmann shows this in poetic images, including the destruction of the heathland. Decades later, the feature film “Sehnsucht” (1990, Jürgen Brauer) explores the same problem with a love story between a “migrant” (Ulrich bother) and a Sorbian (Ulrike Krumbiegel).
A large part of the publication is dedicated to the Sorbian films in the GDR because a stable partner was found in the HFF (Babelsberg Film University “Konrad Wolf”) who was keenly interested in the special nature of this only, state-recognized ethnic minority in the GDR provided young filmmakers and production capacities. GDR television also got involved. They were also co-founders of their own production group “Sorbian Film” (Serbska filmowa skupina) based in Bautzen. Fortunately, many of the details of the people who have kept this special production running over the years are also shared, including the people in the background, without whom no film production can function successfully.
The Sorbs’ visual memory is primarily occupied by folklore: traditional costumes, hairstyles, rituals (for example at weddings), folk customs and customs: the wedding bitters, flax spinning, and the Lusatian landscape anyway plus haystacks plus gondolas plus many flat canals. In the manner of folklore cultural films of various lengths and genres, films help to preserve ethnic identity, even if their current presentation in cinema and television does not correspond to their media and ideal value. At the very end, the Spreewald crime series “Wolfzeit” is included. Sorbian authors such as Jurij Brězan and Jurij Koch and the famous Sorb fairy tale legend “Krabat” also provided material for films.
The fundamental change in Lusatia caused by industrialization meant a radical change in the cultural landscape, which film people also had to face and faced.
Towards the end of the book, co-editor Grit Lemke carefully describes all Sorbian film activities of the last decades. There were and are many, often small, companies that fight bravely and tenaciously. The Cottbus Film Festival plays a significant role in this by supporting small productions through placement and awarding of prizes.
The Sorbian films did not develop a special visual aesthetic if one does not take into account the many image signals of Sorbian character. Alone: It’s definitely worth watching, and so is reading this book.
Grit Lemke, Andy Räder (Hg.): Sorbian film landscapes. Serbske filmowe krajiny. 416 pages, br., 43 photos, incl. 2 DVDs, 39 €.
Subscribe to the “nd”
Being left is complicated.
We keep track!
With our digital promotional subscription you can read all issues of »nd« digitally (nd.App or nd.Epaper) for little money at home or on the go.
Subscribe now!
sbobet judi bola online sbobet88 judi bola