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Whither Germany?
(Kuhle Wampe)

Screening on Film
Directed by Slatan Dudow.
With Hertha Thiele, Ernst Busch, Adolf Fischer.
Germany, 1932, 16mm, black & white, 90 min.
German with English subtitles.

Based on a screenplay co-written by Bertolt Brecht, Whither Germany? is the only Weimar-era film with explicitly Communist politics. Subject to censorship upon its release and banned outright when Hitler came to power, the film depicts the concerns of a working class woman as she and her family struggle to survive, living in a true-to-life tent-city on the outskirts of town before ultimately finding fulfillment in a left-wing workers group. The influence of Russian film theory is evident in Bulgarian director Dudow’s use of montage and rapid editing to convey meaning and in Hanns Eisler’s emphatic score.

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