Life in Wittstock (1984)

Wittstock. “The 20th century is arriving here more slowly than elsewhere in Germany,” says Volker Koepp in his opening commentary on his fifth Wittstock film. Two thousand six hundred people – mostly women – now work at the state-owned company VEB Obertrikotagenbetrieb “Ernst Lück”. An industrial enterprise, conjured out of thin air in the middle of an agricultural region. Edith has been there from the beginning. When we started shooting, she was the FDJ secretary of the youth shift; shortly after completing her apprenticeship, she became a line manager. This meant she was given a job that would normally be done by a foreman. In the ten years since, she has experienced many disappointments. The processes are still not as well-oiled as would be necessary for a well-functioning operation. High staff turnover makes work more difficult. Renate came to Wittstock from an established textile company in Zwickau. She was tempted to start something new. When the factory was expanded, she was one of the few experienced specialists and experienced the problems of developing the industry in a remote area. Although Wittstock, as a former site of uniform cloth factories, is not without a textile tradition, it was almost completely demolished at the end of the Second World War. The girls from the villages have difficulties adapting to the demands of the three-shift industrial operation. In the fourth film, the protagonists are much more monosyllabic than in the previous films and seem more cautious. Edith and her boss Waltraud Dietz have been promoted. The new operations director, who has come from the south of the GDR, has already been able to endure life in Wittstock for five years. Edith, Stubsi and Renate have all married – Renate for the second time. And there are new arrivals. The first feature-length film in the Wittstock series was shown at the FORUM OF YOUNG CINEMA at the “Berlinale” and sold by DEFA foreign trade to Bayerischer Rundfunk. Horst Pehnert, the GDR deputy minister of culture responsible for cinema films, then approached the head of GDR television, Horst Adameck, to request that it be shown on GDR television. Adameck refused, however. The broadcast on Bavarian Radio contributed significantly to the film's popularity among GDR audiences and drew many viewers into GDR cinemas. It thus joined the ranks of the works of many GDR artists who, via the detour of West Germany, also became popular at home. No Wittstock film was shown on GDR television until the Peaceful Revolution of 1989/90. This is an eloquent example of how freedoms were more restricted here than at the DEFA, given that television reached significantly more people than cinema screenings.