Though each cartoon aims to make a point, some of those points are fairly benign. In Hans Moser and Thomas Rosié’s “Hello,” for example, a man travels from the city to the country to the mountains to the beach to the desert, looking for a solitude that proves less than satisfying when he finally finds it. And in Otto Sacher’s “Star And Flower,” a man on the ground neglects a flower because he wants to reach a star, while a man in the sky does the opposite. These are simple, universal ideas: critiques of dissatisfaction that sympathize with the irritated while also reminding them that restlessness is a common human condition, not a uniquely socialist one.
But others of these Red Cartoons have real sting—especially the work of Klaus Georgi and his occasional collaborator Lutz Stützner. Georgi’s “The Full Circle” is a bitter pill, depicting people wearing gas masks because of the pollution emitted by a gas-mask factory. His “Consequence” is even more savage, showing an audience applauding an anti-pollution film, then heading out to their exhaust-spewing automobiles. Georgi and Stützner’s collaborations “The Breakdown” and “The Monument” take direct aim at the establishment: the former through the absurdist image of a tiny car towing a convoy of bloated political leaders’ vehicles, and the latter through a vignette of a statue changing position after it receives a phone call from the party. And Stützner’s 1990 “Island Joke” exemplifies what these DEFA animators do so well, by encapsulating the ridiculousness of a failing state in a scene of three freezing, naked men using a bolt of cloth to make a flag they can salute.
Key features: Just some text pieces and slideshows that put these cartoons in context.
