WRACK AND RUIN: THE RUBBLE FILM AT DEFA (Masters of Cinema

WRACK AND RUIN: THE RUBBLE FILM AT DEFA (Masters of Cinema) Standard Edition Three-disc Se

The first film studio to begin operating in post-war Germany, DEFA was officially authorised to produce films in the Soviet occupation zone in 1946. Overseen by the Soviet Military Administration, one of its primary mandates was to aid in the denazification of Germany by focusing on anti-fascist themes in films that would ruminate on the literal and figurative wreckage left behind by the Third Reich. Often shot on location in the ruins of Berlin, these early DEFA productions have come to be called Trümmerfilme or “rubble films,” and remain some of the most important pictures the studio ever made.

The first film produced in post-war Germany, The Murderers Are Among Us sees a concentration camp survivor return home to Berlin only to find a stranger living in her apartment: an ex-soldier who harbours a terrible secret. Somewhere in Berlin follows a group of children who spend their days playing in bombed-out buildings and a returning prisoner-of-war seeking a new sense of purpose. In Police Raid, a determined detective leads a crackdown on black marketeers who aim to exploit the chaos of the post-war period to their own advantage. Set during the Nazi era, Marriage in the Shadows charts the tragic life of an actor and his Jewish wife as they attempt to survive the Third Reich. Finally, The Blum Affair recounts the true case of a Jewish industrialist who was tried for murder in the 1920s.

Encompassing a range of genres – including the thriller, the police procedural and the courtroom drama – and ranging in visual style from expressionism to stark realism, DEFA’s rubble films are bound together by a concern with the physical and psychological damage wrought by Nazism, World War II and the Holocaust.

STANDARD EDITION THREE-DISC BLU-RAY SET SPECIAL FEATURES:

• Commentary on Somewhere in Berlin by East German cinema scholar Elizabeth Ward
• Commentary on Police Raid by crime cinema expert Sergio Angelini
• Commentary on Marriage in the Shadows by DEFA historian Seán Allan
• Commentary on The Blum Affair written by Rolland Man and presented by David Melville Wingrove
• From the Rubble – interview with socialist cinema expert Claire Knight on the founding of DEFA and its early productions
• Confronting the Past – interview with Jewish studies scholar Sue Vice on Marriage in the Shadows and The Blum Affair
• Crimewave – video essay by DEFA historian Sebastian Heiduschke on Police Raid
• Rebuilding Berlin (1946) – DEFA documentary on the post-war rebuilding of Berlin
• Rebuilding Potsdam (1946) – DEFA documentary on the post-war rebuilding of Potsdam
• Death Camp Sachsenhausen (1946) – DEFA documentary on the Holocaust and Sachsenhausen concentration camp
• The Eyewitness 1946/01 – archival newsreel featuring DEFA’s first animation, Underground Scare
• The Eyewitness 1946/08 – archival newsreel featuring a report on the premiere of The Murderers Are Among Us
• The Eyewitness 1947/53 – archival newsreel featuring a report on the making of Marriage in the Shadows
• Package design by Carly A-F