Un-American Activities
Films of the “other America” at the Leipzig Documentary Film Week before 1990
During the Leipzig Documentary Film Week, more than 150 films from the USA were shown over a period of almost thirty years during the GDR era. From 1962 onwards, there was not a single festival year in which the leading country of the “imperialist bloc” was not represented in the program, with up to ten films often being shown in the 1970s and 1980s. Last year's DOK Leipzig Festival devoted its highly acclaimed retrospective to this hitherto little-researched chapter in the festival's history. The title Un-American Activities refers to the “Committee on Un-American Activities,” an investigative committee of the US House of Representatives that was originally established in 1938 to take action against Nazi sympathizers in the USA, but after the end of World War II became a notorious instrument of anti-communist witch hunts, which today are primarily associated with Senator Joseph McCarthy.
In many of the films that curators Tobias Hering and Tilman Schumacher viewed and, in some cases, rediscovered for the retrospective, the right-wing conservative rollback following the relatively progressive Roosevelt era plays an important role. Even in the 1980s, the US films shown in Leipzig reflected a palpable need for a left-wing historiography that would overcome the trauma of the McCarthy era and build on earlier traditions, especially those of the American labor and trade union movements. In 1981, the Leipzig festival itself contributed to this historiography with a major retrospective on US political documentary film of the 1930s and 1940s.
The narrative that the United States was a country in which “progressive” movements were systematically persecuted under the banner of anti-communism fit in with the image of the USA as an enemy that was officially cultivated in the GDR. But the fact that political repression and social injustice in the US itself met with resistance and gave rise to documentaries critical of the system was also compatible with the more complex image that GDR society had of the US. To put it bluntly, one could argue that it was just as important for the superstructure of real socialist society that the Soviet Union remained historically in the right as it was that the dream of a better America, which could be imagined as a socialist country, was preserved in the USA.
If the films and filmmakers invited to the Leipzig festival were meant to represent this “other America,” they did so sometimes consciously, sometimes unconsciously, sometimes reluctantly, sometimes out of conviction, sometimes with a smile or a shrug. The fact that almost every interview with a guest from the US printed in the Leipzig festival minutes ended with a declaration of support for socialism should not always be taken at face value. At the same time, it should not be underestimated that politically active and often militant filmmakers in the USA risked a great deal for their ideals. They could have made things easier for themselves, but they chose the path of heightened resistance. And it is not only in this respect that the “Un-American Activities” of the 1960s to 1980s seem highly topical. (Tobias Hering and Tilman Schumacher)
From January 15 to 25, 2026, the Filmmuseum Potsdam and the Zeughauskino will repeat parts of the Leipzig retrospective in seven programs.
