Published: 2023-07-04

Escape to freedom in film productions. Real and unreal transitions through the Iron Curtain

Bernadetta Hanna Matuszak-Loose Logo ORCID

Abstract

he cinematic confrontation with the Cold War was both real and symbolic, and repeatedly concerned with the powerful metaphor of political confrontation—the Iron Curtain. The films did not only focus on phenomena of inclusion and exclusion along these system boundaries, but dealt also with the problem of how to overcome the Iron Curtain, i.e. with its permeability. This can be made particularly clear using the example of the German-German-Polish ménage à trois, since the relations between the two German states and the People’s Republic of Poland were specific in many respects. In the Federal Republic of Germany, Poland was seen as the key to the Eastern Bloc, in the GDR as a potential threat, since it was considered far less loyal to the Soviet system of power, downright libertarian, in both West and East Germany. Using a number of film examples, the article shows how the permeability and (in)surmountability of the Iron Curtain, which was literally carved in stone in the middle of Berlin in 1961, was addressed in these films and what role Poland played in this context. The change in the audio-visual representation of flight and transition through the Iron Curtain is traced in a comparative manner, with films for cinema and television being used equally.

 

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Matuszak-Loose, B. H. (2023). Escape to freedom in film productions. Real and unreal transitions through the Iron Curtain. Wortfolge. Szyk Słów, (7), 1–15. https://doi.org/10.31261/WSS.2023.07.03

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No. 7 (2023)
Published: 2023-12-18


eISSN: 2544-4093
Ikona DOI 10.321261/WSS

Publisher
Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Śląskiego | University of Silesia Press

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