GDR Cinema as Commodity: Marketing DEFA Films since Unification

For more than a decade, feature films produced by the GDR film company DEFA have been popular items in Germany. I analyze these films as commodities, arguing that this success by DEFA cinema needs to be read in conjunction with clever marketing strategies employed by the nonprofit foundation DEFA-Stiftung and the commercial home video distributor Icestorm Entertainment. Tracing some of these strategies, I show how DEFA feature films have become identifying markers that attest to a new eastern German regionalism and the reconsideration of the GDR past as part of Germany’s cultural history.