Eastside stories: Singing and dancing for socialism.

The article focuses on three musicals set in East Germany with pop-music style tunes. Despite of the fact that all three of these contemporary musicals set in East Germany proved to be immensely popular with domestic audiences, DEFA produced very few of such motion pictures. One of the reasons was that DEFA was anxious to make a clean break with UFA's tradition of glamorous spectacles and escapist entertainment films. Another reason was constant rivalry with West Germany, which use to produce predominantly light entertainment films. In East Germany, cinema was a key player in the country's cultural self-definition, in evoking a distinct national identity and socialist way of life and therefore DEFA films often tended to be set in unglamorous work-places, which were considered to be the center of the construction of socialism and radical ideological change. With the erection of the Berlin Wall in 1961, DEFA film musicals emerged. East German film authorities realized that in order to compete with the western cinema, they have to respond to audience demands for light-hearted entertainment. Most filmmakers involved in the production of DEFA musicals wanted to adapt the genre to a socialist context. DEFA musicals celebrated affluence, consumerism and mobility in a socialist utopia.