‘Seeing’ India through GDR Newsreels: An exploration of DEFA productions at the Progress Archive, Berlin

Table of Con­tents
News­reels on India in the Progress Archive  | The Progress Film Archive  |  Cold War Research and Cin­e­ma Stud­ies  |   End­notes

In autumn 2018, while prepar­ing a doc­tor­al project pro­pos­al on rela­tions between Ger­many and pre-inde­pen­dence India in the field of film pro­duc­tion, a sys­tem­at­ic online-research on poten­tial archives and col­lec­tions led me to the Progress Archive in Berlin. This is one of Germany’s most exhaus­tive film archives, which also incor­po­rates DEFA (Deutsche Film-Aktienge­sellschaft) pro­duced films from the Ger­man Demo­c­ra­t­ic Repub­lic in its col­lec­tions. I was curi­ous to find out if there were any entries relat­ed to India in the archive’s online data­base. To my fas­ci­na­tion, enter­ing sim­ple-search terms such like “Indi­en” or “indisch” lead, besides oth­er infor­ma­tion, to an unex­pect­ed­ly large num­ber of entries. Note­wor­thy among these were entries on Der Augen­zeuge, news­reels that were pro­duced in the GDR. Between 1946 and 1980, DEFA pro­duced about 2000 news­reels, 154 of which con­tain reports on India.[i] Screened before the main fea­ture films in cin­e­mas, Der Augen­zeuge news­reels were part of the cin­e­ma pro­gramme and were meant to inform audi­ences about cur­rent affairs around the globe. This unique and hith­er­to large­ly unex­plored mate­r­i­al has even­tu­al­ly become the cen­tral focus of my ongo­ing PhD project. 

This arti­cle zooms into the main fea­tures of the DEFA news­reel pro­duc­tions relat­ed to India. The first sec­tion intro­duces the dif­fer­ent kinds of images of India in GDR’s news­reel films. It is based on cer­tain recur­ring themes that may be instruc­tive in cat­e­go­riz­ing and ana­lyz­ing GDR news­reel films on India. The sec­ond sec­tion deals with the nature of the col­lec­tions and the loca­tion of news­reels with­in the orga­niz­ing struc­ture of the Progress Film Archive as the offi­cial archive of DEFA pro­duc­tions. The last sec­tion dis­cuss­es the sig­nif­i­cance of these sources for schol­ar­ship on the Cul­tur­al Cold War. In a dig­i­tal world sat­u­rat­ed with his­tor­i­cal and con­tem­po­rary mate­r­i­al on past events, this under­stud­ied archive may pro­vide insights into pasts, which are very much part of our present.

Newsreels on India in the Progress Archive

India fea­tures in the news­reels since the begin­ning of their pro­duc­tion (1946), but it becomes a promi­nent top­ic with the offi­cial for­ma­tion of the GDR (1949).[ii]  Dur­ing the time-peri­od under con­sid­er­a­tion, which marks the incep­tion of news­reels in 1946 up to 1980, when the pro­duc­tion of news­reels end­ed, India occurs in 154 reports in which it is often pre­sent­ed with promi­nence and pal­pa­ble fra­ter­ni­ty. Though there can be oth­er ways to cat­e­go­rize these reports, three large­ly dis­cernible rubrics emerge:[iii]

1) India’s strug­gle for democ­ra­cy and strength: This cat­e­go­ry refers to reports that describe con­tem­po­rary India from the GDR’s per­spec­tive. Films that pre­sent­ed polit­i­cal, eco­nom­ic, and social issues being faced in India, par­tic­u­lar­ly as a coun­try that had recent­ly gained inde­pen­dence, and those describ­ing the estab­lish­ment of demo­c­ra­t­ic insti­tu­tions in the coun­try belong to this category.

2) India and its net­works of sol­i­dar­i­ty: This cat­e­go­ry con­sists of news­reel reports that sit­u­ate India on the inter­na­tion­al map, par­tic­u­lar­ly in the con­text of inter­na­tion­al sol­i­dar­i­ty among the still-col­o­nized nations, the recent post-colonies, with the GDR, and the broad­er social­ist world.

3) India as a land of the past and the future: This rubric brings togeth­er films that rep­re­sent images of every­day life in India for audi­ences in the GDR. They rely on old­er famil­iar images of the coun­try that had catered to East Ger­man view­ers while simul­ta­ne­ous­ly cap­tur­ing a soci­ety that was seen as rapid­ly changing.

I fol­low this cat­e­go­riza­tion with the aware­ness that plac­ing the vast reper­toire of news­reels into schemat­ic cat­e­gories has its own dan­gers and prob­lems, which could include lim­it­ing their scope and pro­duc­ing pre­con­ceived notions about them. Indeed, news­reels are not, and also can­not, be cat­e­go­rized into any strict­ly defined rubrics also because rep­re­sen­ta­tions of India in these films changed through time. The rubrics are porous and also over­lap­ping, with the same news­reel often belong­ing to more than one cat­e­go­ry. They are thus intend­ed as a heuris­tic tool, which can assist in under­tak­ing a nuanced analy­sis of the films and the themes they cov­er, rather than being exclu­sive categories. 

Fol­low­ing are a few brief exam­ples of the reports that would fall under these cat­e­gories. The major theme of GDR news­reel reports on India from the ear­ly peri­od is India’s strug­gle for democ­ra­cy, which also draws upon the Ger­man expe­ri­ence dur­ing the Sec­ond World War. For exam­ple, one of the ear­ly reports on India, released in Octo­ber 1949, talks about unrest and the par­ti­tion of British India in 1947 and the process of achiev­ing inde­pen­dence from colo­nial rule. This newsreel’s release in cin­e­mas coin­cid­ed with the year when the GDR was also for­mal­ly estab­lished. It con­sists of eight reports on dif­fer­ent top­ics. Among them there are reports main­ly relat­ed to the GDR and com­mu­nist par­ties in Europe.[iv]  Mid­way in the news­reel, a high-paced reportage from India about the after­math of par­ti­tion is pre­sent­ed. Titled as “Unruhen in Indi­en” (Riots in India), it opens with the view of a street with flags of Pak­istan. The fol­low­ing shots also dis­play such flags on hous­es and on the street. Thus, the exis­tence of a new nation, Pak­istan, is the­ma­tized, and the pro­ceed­ing scenes show the polit­i­cal and admin­is­tra­tive activ­i­ties relat­ed to the for­ma­tion of the coun­try. We are shown Moham­mad Ali Jin­nah tak­ing charge of the new nation from the last colo­nial Viceroy Mount­bat­ten. This is fol­lowed by a Pak­istani flag being waved in the par­lia­ment while a voiceover reminds the audi­ence about the role of Britain that “pre­vent­ed the uni­fi­ca­tion of the Indi­an peo­ple and cre­at­ed two states – Pak­istan and India”.[v]  The fol­low­ing scenes show the by now wide­ly known car­nage and destruc­tion dur­ing par­ti­tion. The his­tor­i­cal moment par­ti­tion, its ensu­ing vio­lence and destruc­tion, and a divid­ed soci­ety – the report empha­sizes these as the bit­ter fruits of colo­nial rule in India, and draws view­ers’ atten­tion to the uncan­ny resem­blance that par­ti­tion has with the post-war sit­u­a­tion in Ger­many at that moment. It is impor­tant to note that reports such as these do not draw direct par­al­lels between the two coun­tries, but they do attempt to por­tray close affini­ties in terms of their quest for peace and democracy.

The reports on India’s stand­ing in world pol­i­tics not only deal with the GDR’s offi­cial expec­ta­tions of, and efforts towards, gain­ing polit­i­cal recog­ni­tion in the world, but also show the influ­ence of social­ist ide­ol­o­gy on for­mer­ly col­o­nized nations. Indo-GDR rela­tions were of sig­nif­i­cance in the polit­i­cal-cul­tur­al con­text of the Cold War, when for­mer colonies became impor­tant for both the ‘blocs’.[vi] News­reels often com­bined for­mal aspects of inter­state affairs with shots from the side-lines of these activ­i­ties and loca­tions, and employed back­ground music which empha­sized the urgency and warmth of India-GDR rela­tions. Cul­tur­al events and land­scapes played a cru­cial role in these rep­re­sen­ta­tions, and it is inter­est­ing to note how stereo­types pro­duced by such images present an implic­it ten­sion between an anti-impe­ri­al­ist, social­ist ide­ol­o­gy and a con­ven­tion­al ori­en­tal­ist under­stand­ing of India. To make them appear authen­tic and close to real­i­ty, news on every­day life and cul­ture was a promi­nent part of these reports. A mix­ture of stereo­types, dynam­ic, and spec­tac­u­lar images of India was repet­i­tive­ly uti­lized to pro­duce a sense of every­day life in the coun­try. India was depict­ed as a land of spec­ta­cles and para­dox­es. Thus, for exam­ple, on the one hand, a report pre­sent­ed that there was a record tem­per­a­ture of 50 degrees in Cal­cut­ta (1958), and on the oth­er, in a dif­fer­ent report, cou­ples were shown danc­ing waltz and skat­ing on a frozen lake in the north­ern part of the coun­try (1954). On one rare occa­sion, a news­reel opened with sports news, in which scenes from a hock­ey match between the nation­al teams of India and GDR were shown (1968). Here, India was con­struct­ed as a coun­try that was advanc­ing, not only in pol­i­tics and econ­o­my, but also in sports.

The Progress Film Archive

Locat­ed today in cen­tral Berlin’s Friedrich­straße, Progress was orig­i­nal­ly a Ger­man film dis­trib­u­tor that was found­ed on August 1, 1950, as a Ger­man-Sovi­et film dis­tri­b­u­tion com­pa­ny. Accord­ing to the web­page of the archive, Progress was

the only film dis­trib­u­tor in the Ger­man Demo­c­ra­t­ic Repub­lic [GDR] and brought around 12000 films to the country’s 830 cin­e­mas. Almost half of them were fea­ture films and doc­u­men­taries by DEFA, the only film stu­dio in the GDR. With rough­ly 100 employ­ees, progress released around four films a week. The DEFA doc­u­men­taries and news­reels show the 20th cen­tu­ry world from an East­ern per­spec­tive.[vii]

After the fall of the Berlin Wall, Progress inher­it­ed the films pro­duced by DEFA, the state-owned GDR film pro­duc­tion com­pa­ny, and became a unique archive that holds the com­plete cin­e­mat­ic pro­duc­tions of a “now entire­ly non-exis­tent coun­try”.[viii]

A domes­tic film dis­trib­u­tor in the GDR, Progress Filmver­leih went into obliv­ion for many years after Ger­man reuni­fi­ca­tion until it was revived in the late 1990s. Present­ly, it is a film dis­tri­b­u­tion com­pa­ny owned by Ices­torm Enter­tain­ment. The archive works in tan­dem with the Ger­man Fed­er­al Film Archive (Bun­de­sarchiv-Fil­marchiv), which func­tions as a film neg­a­tive stor­age facil­i­ty, and the DEFA-Stiftung, which has legal rights over all DEFA pro­duc­tions, and the respon­si­bil­i­ty to make them avail­able to a wider pub­lic.[ix]  Progress’s office in Berlin has DEFA pro­duced films stored on DVD and oth­er for­mats, which one can access upon request. How­ev­er, not all DEFA films can be accessed in the archive due to tech­ni­cal lim­i­ta­tions, such as lim­it­ed film pro­jec­tion equip­ment, and one may need to vis­it the Bun­de­sarchiv-Fil­marchiv for some film pre­views. The best way to access DEFA films is through Progress’s online por­tal (https://progress.film), that offers almost the entire film mate­r­i­al via online-stream­ing. The portal’s search option enables users to find films through their titles or key words and the results can be fil­tered based on the source (e.g. His­to­riathek, Cinezen­trum, DEFA etc.), the year and the over­ar­ch­ing cat­e­go­ry (e.g. news­reels, DDR Mag­a­zine, fea­ture films etc.) of the pro­duc­tion. The plat­form thus pro­vides basic infor­ma­tion about the pro­duc­tions such as the year of pro­duc­tion and release, the direc­tors, peo­ple and places men­tioned, a descrip­tion of the visu­als, and a tran­script of dia­logues and voiceovers in Ger­man, which one hopes will improve in their accu­ra­cy and qual­i­ty in the future with devel­op­ing tech­niques, giv­en that for instance some of the non-Ger­man names and places are not appro­pri­ate­ly tran­scribed by the pro­gramme. The por­tal is con­tin­u­ous­ly evolv­ing and has recent­ly also incor­po­rat­ed film mate­ri­als from non-DEFA sources, like Cin­tec, Widoks, and West Ger­man news­reels etc. The Progress Archive pro­vides inter­est­ed users only lim­it­ed access to the films and the above­men­tioned basic infor­ma­tion about them. How­ev­er, users need to con­sult the Bun­de­sarchiv-Fil­marchiv or the DEFA-Stiftung for pro­duc­tion doc­u­men­ta­tion and any oth­er details.

Besides the news­reel films pro­duced by DEFA, the Progress Archive’s col­lec­tions also include pro­duc­tions by Fil­mak­tiv,[x] DEFA’s pre­de­ces­sor, that was found­ed in Octo­ber 1945 by com­mu­nist film­mak­ers in exile with the aim of reviv­ing Ger­man cin­e­ma. These films were screened before main fea­ture films in cin­e­ma halls. The state-owned film pro­duc­tion com­pa­ny DEFA was estab­lished in May 1946 with the man­date of “de-Naz­i­fi­ca­tion and polit­i­cal re-edu­ca­tion in Ger­many”.[xi]  It took over the pro­duc­tion of the news­reel series Der Augen­zeuge from Fil­mak­tiv, which was ini­tial­ly released week­ly, and lat­er twice a week, with the pur­pose of edu­cat­ing audi­ences about “social­ist work­ing, learn­ing, and liv­ing”, with the USSR as its nat­ur­al mod­el.[xii]

Cold War Research and Cinema Studies

News­reel reports in the Progress Film Archive present an unex­plored oppor­tu­ni­ty to see India from a unique his­tor­i­cal per­spec­tive which was not only close and sym­pa­thet­ic to the nation and its peo­ple, but also depict­ed a view that now belongs to a non-exis­tent coun­try. In these pro­duc­tions, we wit­ness the GDR as the “oth­er” Ger­many, a social­ist Ger­many, which was try­ing to make sense of, and rep­re­sent, an emerg­ing post­colo­nial India for its own cit­i­zens. News­reels can serve as a rich source-base in refram­ing and resi­t­u­at­ing frame­works uti­lized in his­tor­i­cal as well as cin­e­mat­ic stud­ies on the Cold War. Thus, in the Progress Film Archive, we find rich film mate­r­i­al that might con­tribute to diver­si­fy­ing under­stand­ings of the Cold War and cinema’s role in it. More so, because it is locat­ed in one of the coun­tries that played a key role in the peri­od, but does not exist anymore.

The Cold War did not end with the Cold War. Writ­ing Cold War his­to­ries and there­in shap­ing per­spec­tives to sit­u­ate and under­stand those pasts con­tin­ues to be an ongo­ing effort after the fall of the Berlin Wall and the dis­so­lu­tion of the Sovi­et Union. How­ev­er, one can observe that his­tor­i­cal schol­ar­ship on the Cold War, to some extent, repro­duces Cold War dichotomies. Where­as New Cold War His­to­ry has attempt­ed to diver­si­fy per­spec­tives by incor­po­rat­ing those from around the world, par­tic­u­lar­ly those from for­mer social­ist coun­tries,[xiii] such per­spec­tives are still miss­ing in the field of film and cin­e­ma stud­ies.  His­to­ries that rely on films made dur­ing or on the Cold War as their source-base, still large­ly mir­ror Cold War his­tor­i­cal posi­tion­al­i­ties where­by Amer­i­can and West­ern nar­ra­tives are still pre­dom­i­nant, not least because of the over­whelm­ing author­i­ta­tive pres­ence of the Hol­ly­wood film indus­try and US media dis­course.[xiv]  

In cin­e­mat­ic rep­re­sen­ta­tions of the Cold War, this near monop­oly of an Amer­i­can view can eas­i­ly be dis­cerned from the con­tent of fea­ture films, doc­u­men­taries, as well as oth­er gen­res of non-fic­tion films that also include news­reels films.[xv] This not only leads to mis­rep­re­sen­ta­tion or non-rep­re­sen­ta­tion in cul­tur­al pro­duc­tion, but also con­tributes to the pro­duc­tion of skewed knowl­edge and his­to­ry around Cold War themes, as has been apt­ly dis­cussed by Nora Alter in her research on Ger­man non-fic­tion cin­e­ma.[xvi]  As Marc Fer­ro argues, as a medi­um, films are “an agent, prod­uct and source of his­to­ry”, which not only influ­ence the mak­ing of his­to­ry but also his­to­ri­og­ra­phy.[xvii] 

In recent schol­ar­ship there has been a greater empha­sis on iden­ti­fy­ing alter­na­tive source mate­ri­als to con­test undif­fer­en­ti­at­ed and hege­mon­ic dis­cours­es about the Cold War. This is espe­cial­ly need­ed in order to bet­ter under­stand and val­ue the role of coun­tries from Asia, Africa, and Latin Amer­i­ca in the Cold War. This not only incor­po­rates ana­lyz­ing how they were pro­ject­ed by Cold War ‘blocs’ (or with­in ‘bloc’ pol­i­tics) but also, and even more so, how actors from ‘third world’ coun­tries per­ceived their rep­re­sen­ta­tion with­in Cold War dis­cours­es. DEFA news­reels pro­vide an inter­est­ing set of mate­ri­als in which one can map both nation­al anx­i­eties and inter­na­tion­al imag­i­na­tions in how a social­ist state (GDR) pro­ject­ed itself through the por­tray­al of coun­tries like India by a state-owned film body. They also become a resource for decen­tral­iz­ing the explo­ration of the cin­e­mat­ic medi­um and imag­i­na­tive pol­i­tics. The por­tray­al of ‘devel­op­ing nations’ in these films (and the shifts there­in over time) become a rich repos­i­to­ry for explor­ing the role and strate­gic sig­nif­i­cance of these nations for social­ist states like the GDR. They also hint at tran­si­tions in the dis­cours­es and realpoli­tik of the Cold War. Por­tray­als of the ‘third world’ often still bor­row from what was pro­duced dur­ing the Cold War. Work­ing with sources from a dig­i­tized archive like the Progress Archive can pro­vide schol­ars the oppor­tu­ni­ty to explore con­ti­nu­ities in the medi­um and how it cre­ates its own recur­sive repertoires.

Endnotes

[i] These ten to twelve min­utes’ long news­reels con­tained between 8 to 15 reports. They most­ly began with a report on top­ics of nation­al or local sig­nif­i­cance and end­ed with those on cul­ture and sports. Reports that were placed in between most­ly cov­ered themes in inter­na­tion­al affairs; aspects of social, polit­i­cal, and cul­tur­al life in the GDR and the USSR, but also cov­er­age on coun­tries from around the world, where the GDR had strate­gic inter­ests. In this paper, an entire news­reel film is referred to as ‘film’, and a com­plete seg­ment of the news­reel, which deals with a par­tic­u­lar top­ic is referred to as a ‘report’.

[ii] See Haque, Reyazul. 2020. “Non-Fic­tion films pro­duced by DEFA in the Ger­man Demo­c­ra­t­ic Repub­lic, 1946–1989. Col­lec­tions of the Progress Film Archive, Berlin”, MIDA The­ma­tis­che Ressource. DOI: https://doi.org/10.25360/01–2022-00042. Avail­able online at https://www.projekt-mida.de/en/thematicressources/list-of-non-fiction-films-produced-by-defa-in-the-german-democratic-republic-1946–1989-collections-of-the-progress-film-archive-berlin/

It is note­wor­thy that oth­er South Asian coun­tries like Pak­istan, Bangladesh, and Sri Lan­ka also appear in the news­reels and explor­ing them can also open inter­est­ing research avenues.

[iii] I have dealt with these rubrics and their con­tents in depth in the fol­low­ing pub­li­ca­tion: Haque, Reyazul. 2021. “A Wit­ness to His­to­ry — Pro­duc­tion of Images of India in GDR News­reels”. In: Anan­di­ta Baj­pai (ed.) Cor­dial Cold War — Cul­tur­al Actors in India and the Ger­man Demo­c­ra­t­ic Repub­lic. Los Ange­les, Lon­don, New Del­hi: Sage, pp. 153–177. Avail­able online at https://spectrum.sagepub.in/_api/v1/products/6/variants/18/pdf_file

[iv] Der Augen­zeuge 1949/39, 1949. Avail­able online at http://www.progress-film.de/der-augenzeuge-1949–39.html. Accessed on 29 Feb­ru­ary 2020.

[v] A tran­scrip­tion of the select­ed voiceover is pro­vid­ed in Ger­man on the web­site along with the video. The trans­la­tion has been done by the author.

[vi] See Benatar, Alexan­der. 2020. Kalter Krieg auf dem indis­chen Sub­kon­ti­nent: Die deutsch-deutsche Diplo­matie im Banglade­schkrieg 1971. Berlin, Boston: De Gruyter. DOI: https://doi.org/‌10.1515/9783110682038. Also Benatar’s (2019) essay “Die Beziehun­gen zwis­chen Pak­istan und der DDR bis 1973”, MIDA Archival Reflex­i­con, DOI: https://doi.org/10.25360/01–2022-00011. Avail­able online at https://www.projekt-mida.de/reflexicon/die-beziehungen-zwischen-pakistan-und-der-ddr-bis-1973/.

[vii] ‘About Us’, Progress, https://progress.film/about_us. Accessed online on 29th August 2020.

[viii] ‘About Us’, Progress, https://progress.film/about_us. Accessed online on 29th August 2020.

[ix] Hei­duschke, Sebas­t­ian. 2013. East Ger­man Cin­e­ma: DEFA and Film His­to­ry. New York: Pal­grave Macmil­lan, p.33. DEFA Stiftung can be reached through its web­site: https://www.defa-stiftung.de/defa/geschichte/

[x] Hei­duschke, Sebas­t­ian. 2013. East Ger­man Cin­e­ma: DEFA and Film His­to­ry. New York: Pal­grave Macmil­lan, p.10. It is inter­est­ing to note that idea of Fil­mak­tiv was to make cin­e­ma to “pro­mote a sense of respect for oth­er peo­ple and oth­er nations” (ibid).

[xi] Allan, Seán. 2015. “DEFA’s antifas­cist myths and the con­struc­tion in East Ger­man cin­e­ma”. In: K. Leed­er (ed.), Reread­ing East Ger­many: The Lit­er­a­ture and Film of the GDR. Cam­bridge: Cam­bridge Uni­ver­si­ty Press, p. 52.

[xii] Lehn­ert, Sigrun. 2018. “Ger­man News­reels as Agent of His­to­ry”. Media His­to­ry, DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/13688804.2018.1544886 .

[xiii] For an overview of dif­fer­ent per­spec­tives on his­to­ri­og­ra­phy on Cold War, see for exam­ple, Romero, Fed­eri­co. 2014. “Cold War His­to­ri­og­ra­phy at the Cross­roads”, Cold War His­to­ry 14, 4, pp. 685–703, DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/14682745.2014.950249.

[xiv] See for exam­ple Shaw, Tony. 2007. Hollywood’s Cold War. Edin­burgh: Edin­burgh Uni­ver­si­ty Press. Also see Shain, Rus­sell E. 1974. “Hollywood’s Cold War”, Jour­nal of Pop­u­lar Film 3, 4, pp. 334–350, DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/00472719.1974.10661746.

[xv] For exam­ple, see Alter, Nora M. 2002. Pro­ject­ing His­to­ry: Ger­man Non­fic­tion Cin­e­ma, 1967–2000. Ann Arbor: The Uni­ver­si­ty of Michi­gan Press. “The Amer­i­can avoid­ance of non‑U.S. mate­r­i­al man­i­fests itself not only on the lev­el of cul­tur­al pro­duc­tion but also on the lev­el of intel­lec­tu­al analy­sis. Most Eng­lish-lan­guage arti­cles on doc­u­men­taries about the Viet­nam War focus exclu­sive­ly on Amer­i­can doc­u­men­taries.” (p.20)

[xvi] Alter, Nora M. 2002. Pro­ject­ing His­to­ry: Ger­man Non­fic­tion Cin­e­ma, 1967–2000. Ann Arbor: The Uni­ver­si­ty of Michi­gan Press. p. 20.

[xvii] Fer­ro, Marc. 1983. “Film as an Agent, Prod­uct and Source of His­to­ry”. Jour­nal of Con­tem­po­rary His­to­ry 18, p. 357.

Reyazul Haque, Leib­niz-Zen­trum Mod­ern­er Ori­ent, Berlin