DEFA’s Der Schweigende Stern - a Successful Reaction?

Scientific Essay from the year 2010 in the subject Communications - Movies and Television, grade: A-, University of Toronto, course: East German Film, language: English, abstract: This paper takes a closer look at DEFA’s production, Der Schweigende Stern, and argues that this film can be classfied as reactionary. To get to this conclusion, we first analyze the intentions of DEFA producers when making this film, and we discuss the ways in which the movie responds to western (primarily American) capitalist culture during the Cold War. Then we look at the overall success of the film and reflect if it still has any relevance today, some twenty years after the end of the Cold War, the Wende, and the complete disappearance of the German Democratic Republic from the world map.