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 On October 7, 1949, a new country was born out of the ashes of World War II. It was known as the Deutsche Demokratische Republik (German Democratic Republic), or DDR, known to the western world as East Germany. But unlike the birth of many nations throughout history, the DDR did not herald a time of celebration, but instead ushered in a new era of fear and trepidation known as the Cold War. Despite all its fanfare, the DDR barely lasted through its 40th birthday before reuniting with its former enemy West Germany on October 3, 1990.
In 2005, British tourist Ian Hawkins bought a t-shirt in Berlin that bore the logo of the DDR. At first it seemed to him simply a souvenir, but it soon spawned a fascination with this era of history. So he set out to discover what life in the DDR was really like.
This film mainly followed an interview format. Apart from some voice-overs from the director, the majority of the film was comprised of interviews from former DDR citizens. It was quite the colorful cast of characters - among them, a child of Communist parents and grandparents who missed the DDR, a West German who spent years in an East German prison for attempting to smuggle his girlfriend out of the DDR, and a British Communist who worked for the Stasi (the DDR's secret police). One of the hallmarks of a good documentary is showing both sides of the story, and My DDR T-shirt certainly hits that mark. For those of us who grew up on the west side of the Cold War, it's easy to think that all citizens of East Germany would have hated what is generally termed as an oppressive regime. But even in modern times, one will still find former DDR citizens protesting in favor of Communism - obviously not all are so glad to see their country gone. The personal accounts from these interviews were very insightful and gave a great look into a world that many viewers may not know anything about.
The director also employed subtitles for folks who had heavy accents. Fortunately, they chose people who had a good grasp of English despite their accent, so that I found that they were all easy to understand. The only time I had difficulty understanding a speaker was when the Ukrainian woman who ran the Checkpoint Charlie museum was interviewed. However, her interview was also shot in a room with a lot of echo, so that may also have been a contributing factor to problems in understanding her. (More on this later.)
My one complaint as far as content goes was that there wasn't a lot of explanation on what the DDR actually was. Most Americans - and most anyone who didn't live through at least part of the Cold War - refer to the DDR as East Germany. Sadly enough, a Wikipedia search of "DDR" will bring up "Dance Dance Revolution" as its first result. In fact, my editor initially thought that the film had something do to with the Nazis. But it was only because I had seen the film "Goodbye Lenin" that I was able to tell him what "DDR" actually stood for. It would certainly be boring to include the entire history of East Germany, but since the documentary interchanges all the country's different names - "GDR," "DDR," "Deutsche Demokratische Republik," etc. - it would at least be helpful to give a brief explanation to the audience at the beginning of the film.
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