A fascinating documentary drama about the 17th June 1953 in East Germany - 50 years after the first popular uprising in the former Soviet sphere of influence. An elaborate television movie with a star cast of actors and this year's high point in contemporary history program of the ZDF.
With the death of the dictator Stalin as a prologue describing the 105-minute film, the backgrounds, the course and the violent suppression of mass protests that threatened to plunge a few years after the founding of the GDR, the SED regime.
This film of the unknown heroes of the uprising until today a face: the construction workers of the Stalin Allee and the other strikers, the one the whole of East Berlin from East Germany covered wildfire sparked the rebellion.
The attention to detail authentically reconstructed scenes in the centers of power in East Berlin and Moscow, in the guilds, factories and on roads in the East are closely intertwined with interviews with witnesses, previously unknown original film footage and allow deep insight into an event that the communist regime until his final fall as painful as taboo as closely guarded state secret.
Closest associate of the governments and secret services in Moscow and East Berlin, reveal that the crisis was close to world political escalation. Egon Bahr, Klaus Bölling and other former employees of the American radio station RIAS report at the same time, how surprised the West by the events and was stalked by the fear that they could transform the cold into a hot war.
"The Uprising" reveals the dramatic interplay between the revolutionary enthusiasm and courage of the insurgents and based on state-sharing and peace of the graveyard stability of the cold war: at the beginning of a spontaneous workers protest with economic demands, but literally overnight, almost as instinctively a political uprising for freedom and the overthrow of the SED dictatorship.
Guido Knopp, head of the ZDF Contemporary History:
"The essential difference to the Revolution of 1989 was that in June '53 and they marched out the Soviet tanks remained in the fall of '89 in the barracks. But for a long time the people had forced the regime to the brink of a final defeat. The makes the people not just on surveys rich German history from the enduring importance of the 17th June. "
Hans-Christoph Blumenberg, Author and Director:
"The 17th of June was for me an earlier date, the importance mainly from the outside and was subsequently read into: very pleasant for us in the West, because we gave this one more holiday, nonetheless, an ideological reflex. Only in the course of preparation of the film I understood the real dimension of the events. And now I admire not only the performance of my actors, but almost more that of their historical models, the East Berlin workers. "
Der Aufstand - Backstage:
Cast:
Jürgen Vogel, Jan Josef Liefers, Stefanie Stappenbeck, Uwe Bohm, Gabriela Maria Schmeide, Heikko Deutschmann, Christian Redl, Florian Martens, Gojko Mitic,
Florian Lukas Günter Junghans, Herbert Knaup, Dieter Mann, Dieter Wien, Michael Kind, Karl Kranzkowski, Werner Wölbern, Horst-Günter Marx, Robert Glatzeder and others
Written by: |
Hans-Christoph Blumenberg |
Directed by: |
Hans-Christoph Blumenberg |
Director of Photography: |
Tomas Erhart |
Director of Photography Interviews |
Christian Girardet |
Sound: |
Werner Langheld |
Costume design: |
Gudrun Schretzmeier |
Set design: |
Erik Rüffler |
Make-up: |
Sabine Schumann, Bernd Heinemann, Jens Bartram |
Edited by: |
Guido Knopp, Jean-Christoph Caron |
Production Manager: |
Thomas Schwetje |
Executive Producer: |
Andreas Knoblauch |
Head of Production: |
Ulrich Lenze |
TV Editor: |
Guido Knopp |
Produced for: |
ZDF, 2003 |
