GDR movie posters: Creative freedom past the censors

Murderers are Among Us is the first German film to be released post-war and at the same time, the first film produced by the Deutsche Filim AG (DEFA), which was founded in May 1946. For his book, More Art than Advertisement: GDR Movie Posters 1945-1990, graphic designer Detlef Helmbold has collected more than 6,000 movie posters. They show that poster art was highly esteemed in East Germany.

Also produced by DEFA was the film The Affair Blum by Erich Engel, a film about a 1920s judicial scandal. The poster is a representative example of the "head poster" genre, typical of the 1940s and 1950s. Generally speaking, author Detlef Helmbold says that graphic artists working in East Germany were given a lot of creative leeway to design these posters.

Mountains in Flames was produced in Lodz, Poland. A movie about oppressed peasants organizing an uprising against the nobility, the DEFA had the film dubbed into German. A film poster by Werner Gottsmann shows once again that the artistic approach was in the foreground, as the poster does not depict a scene or content from the movie.

A film by director Federico Fellini from Italy, La Strada premiered in 1954 in Venice and won several awards in the following years, including an Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film in 1957. Anthony Quinn stars in the role of a showman named Zampanó, who entertains crowds at carnivals by breaking free from iron chains bound across his chest.

This drama from Portugal by director António de Macedo is about a marriage that is overwhelmed with a chastity vow. Posters at the time didn't have to clearly establish that it was a color film, as it was long clear that black-and-white films had become a rarity, explains author Detlef Hembold.

This is one of the favorite posters of graphic artist and author Detlef Helmbold. In his opinion, it shows that "the posters are more art than advertisement." Again, the symbolic interpretation of the film is in the center and information about the movie's content is left out. "Such a movie poster would not exist in the West, not today and not back then either," says Helmbold.

A film from the former Yugoslavia, in its original language, the title of Novinar should translate to "journalist." In the GDR, however, the film was given a new name to avoid giving the appearance that journalists were muzzled, as a muzzle was a central feature of the poster. In the end, even with a new title, it was nevertheless forbidden to hang the poster.

In the 1980s, the style was "wilder and more expressive," says Detlef Helmbold, as shown here on the poster for the British movie Greystoke: The Legend of Tarzan, Lord of the Apes by director Hugh Hudson. The script is based on the Tarzan stories by the American writer Edgar Rice Burroughs.

Created for a co-production between East and West Germany, this is one of author Helmbold's favorite posters: "The whole title becomes a mountain, the artist was totally free," he says. The film tells the story of an expedition by Alexander von Humboldt to the Ecuadorian volcano Chimborazo. The premiere of the film took place only a few weeks before the fall of the Berlin Wall.

This poster was created by Detlef Helmbold himself. From 1986 to 1990, he worked as an employed graphic designer at Progress Film Distribution in former East Germany. This film, shot by the East German director Frank Vogel in 1965, was banned in the GDR; it was considered "particularly harmful" because of its critical examination of socialism. The premiere took place in April 1990.