Underplayed Gems

Du und mancher Kamerad (1956)

Du und mancher Kamerad poster
Directed by
Andrew Thorndike
Genre
documentary film
Country
German Democratic Republic, Germany
Runtime
1h 43m
Rating
8.0 of 10 from 1 voters
Elsewhere
IMDb
The 3D catalogue: film cases on wooden shelves, with the cat sitting at the counter next to its greeting.

The catalogue in 3D

The film shelves have a room of their own that you can walk around in. The cat behind the counter is the AI Catbot, and they pick real films from the same catalogue when you tell them what you feel like watching. Nothing is for sale, here or in there. Go in from here and this film is already out on the counter, with more like it waiting on the shelf next to it.

More films like this

How it feels

This East German documentary uses old film clips to argue that German governments from the imperial era through the Weimar Republic and the Nazis share a continuous line with postwar West Germany. It presents this connection to make a political point about war and peace.

archivalhistoricalpolemicaleducationalsomberargumentativeretrospectivedidactic

What happens

Du und mancher Kamerad is a 1956 East German documentary film by Andrew and Annelie Thorndike. In English-speaking countries it was titled You and Your Pal or The German Story. The film employed archival footage to draw connections between Imperial Germany, the government of the Weimar Republic, the Third Reich and the government of West Germany at the time. The film has an alternate title of Krieg oder Frieden and is the best-known of the Thorndike films. An East German newspaper claimed that the film was well received in the United Kingdom. It was banned in West Germany and remained so some years after its release; some subsequent films directed by the Thorndikes were banned in Great Britain by the British Board of Film Classification. When the film ran in Dublin in 1960, the Fine Gael opposition complained in the Dáil that it should have been banned by the Official Censor of Films for meeting the statutory criterion of being "subversive of public morality". (from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA)

More like this

This page is from Underplayed Gems. Not quite it? You can browse by genre, country and year, or take this one into the 3D catalogue and ask the Catbot for something closer.