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Coming Out Frackman, Kyle

Abstract

It took forty years for East Germany's state-run studios, DEFA, to produce a feature film about homosexuality: Coming Out. The film's story seems radically ordinary today: a young teacher, Philipp, is gay but cannot accept the truth about his sexuality. He starts a relationship with a fellow teacher, Tanja, but falls in love with a man he meets, Matthias, whose confidence in his own self-understanding is alluring for him as well as a challenge. Acclaimed director Heiner Carow created a film that shows the difficulties, both internalized and external, that queer people faced in East Germany. In a quirk of history, Coming Out premiered in German theaters on November 9, 1989, the very night on which the Berlin Wall was opened, which meant the film was initially overshadowed, to say the least, by the earthshaking political events. Yet it remains a popular film and is regularly screened around the world, including prominently at queer film festivals. This book examines the film in both the late East German context of its creation and the international context of its reception. The open access version of this book is made possible by the UBC Open Access Fund for Humanities and Social Sciences Research.

Item Metadata

Title
Coming Out
Creator
Frackman, Kyle
Publisher
Camden House
Date Issued
2022
Description
It took forty years for East Germany's state-run studios, DEFA, to produce a feature film about homosexuality: Coming Out. The film's story seems radically ordinary today: a young teacher, Philipp, is gay but cannot accept the truth about his sexuality. He starts a relationship with a fellow teacher, Tanja, but falls in love with a man he meets, Matthias, whose confidence in his own self-understanding is alluring for him as well as a challenge. Acclaimed director Heiner Carow created a film that shows the difficulties, both internalized and external, that queer people faced in East Germany. In a quirk of history, Coming Out premiered in German theaters on November 9, 1989, the very night on which the Berlin Wall was opened, which meant the film was initially overshadowed, to say the least, by the earthshaking political events. Yet it remains a popular film and is regularly screened around the world, including prominently at queer film festivals. This book examines the film in both the late East German context of its creation and the international context of its reception. The open access version of this book is made possible by the UBC Open Access Fund for Humanities and Social Sciences Research.
Genre
Book
Type
Text
Language
eng
Date Available
2022-03-08
Provider
Vancouver : University of British Columbia Library
Rights
Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International
DOI
10.14288/1.0407069
URI
http://hdl.handle.net/2429/80927
Affiliation
Arts, Faculty of; Central, Eastern, and Northern European Studies, Department of
Peer Review Status
Reviewed
Scholarly Level
Faculty
Rights URI
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/
Aggregated Source Repository
DSpace

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Rights

Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International