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East Side Story

  • 1997
  • 1h 18m
IMDb RATING
7.2/10
244
YOUR RATING
East Side Story (1997)
DocumentaryMusic

A look at Communist musicals that strove to be ideologically correct - and entertaining, besides.A look at Communist musicals that strove to be ideologically correct - and entertaining, besides.A look at Communist musicals that strove to be ideologically correct - and entertaining, besides.

  • Director
    • Dana Ranga
  • Writers
    • Andrew Horn
    • Dana Ranga
  • Stars
    • Margarita Andrushkovich
    • Chris Doerk
    • Erich Gusko
  • See production info at IMDbPro
  • IMDb RATING
    7.2/10
    244
    YOUR RATING
    • Director
      • Dana Ranga
    • Writers
      • Andrew Horn
      • Dana Ranga
    • Stars
      • Margarita Andrushkovich
      • Chris Doerk
      • Erich Gusko
    • 7User reviews
    • 14Critic reviews
  • See production info at IMDbPro
  • See production info at IMDbPro
    • Awards
      • 1 nomination total

    Photos12

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    Top cast22

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    Margarita Andrushkovich
    • Self
    • (as Margarita Andruschkovitsch)
    Chris Doerk
    • Self
    Erich Gusko
    • Self
    Helmut Hanke
    • Self
    Barbara Harnisch
    • Party Girl
    Brit Krüger
    • Party Girl
    Andrea Schmidt
    • Party Girl
    Karin Schröder
    • Self
    Frank Schöbel
    Frank Schöbel
    • Self
    Maya Turovskaya
    • Self (film historian)
    Brigitte Ulbrich
    • Self
    Hans-Joachim Wallstein
    • Self
    Nikolai Bulganin
    Nikolai Bulganin
    • Self (watches military parade)
    • (archive footage)
    • (uncredited)
    Nikita Khrushchev
    Nikita Khrushchev
    • Self
    • (archive footage)
    • (uncredited)
    Marina Ladynina
    Marina Ladynina
    • Various roles
    • (archive footage)
    • (uncredited)
    Vladimir Lenin
    Vladimir Lenin
    • Self
    • (archive footage)
    • (uncredited)
    Anastas Mikoyan
    Anastas Mikoyan
    • Self (watches military parade)
    • (archive footage)
    • (uncredited)
    Vyacheslav Molotov
    Vyacheslav Molotov
    • Self
    • (archive footage)
    • (uncredited)
    • Director
      • Dana Ranga
    • Writers
      • Andrew Horn
      • Dana Ranga
    • All cast & crew
    • Production, box office & more at IMDbPro

    User reviews7

    7.2244
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    Featured reviews

    stan-62

    It was a hoot

    This film was tremendously entertaining. Even it you're not an obscure documentary aficionado, it was a lot of fun. The lengths they went to to make socialism seem like fun were really hilarious. And finding out that Stalin was a fan of musicals was also funny, since he really didn't seem the type to enjoy a lot of light-hearted singing and dancing. The singing pig farmers were also great. And the directors telling about how they were told to make movies that made socialism fun when they couldn't run their lights for more than 10 minutes without bringing down the East German power grid really just summed up the whole experience.
    MarkusRTK

    Pure Fun

    Don't go renting "East Side Story" because you want an insightful portrait of life in Communist countries through their musicals. Don't go renting it if you want a detailed technical study of the musical from an unusual point of view. Don't, by all means, go renting it if you want to cry over the poignancy of the worker's hardships manifested by singing. Do, however, rent it if you want to point at the TV and laugh "Ha ha! Dancing Communists! Ha ha ha!"

    Not to knock dancing Communists. Certainly "East Side Story" is a rollicking good time, but nothing more than that - this is no "Bowling for Columbine," certainly. The narration is insipid, and the interviews are of varying quality, but the clips from the musicals and the simply funny premise make this a recreational documentary that, by all means, go and check out if you've nothing meaningful to do.
    8vortexrider

    Informative and entertaining documentary

    East Side Story entertains and informs about an unknown part of Cold War history. What is the purpose of any documentary? To inform the reader through commentary and footage. This one succeeds at both. You will never find many movies whose clips you get to see in here because some of them have been destroyed and some are unaccessible.

    You get to see and her music from musicals made in East Germany, Russia, and other countries under Soviet Control. It shows you that the people who made these movies and the people who watched them all look for same things a Westerner would look for, which are pretty women and men singing and dancing on the streets with smiles and (hopefully) white teeth.
    9sydhe

    Fascinating view of Stalinist and Warsaw Pact musical comedy, showing that even in a repressive dictatorship, people still need to be entertained.

    "East Side Story" is a documentary of musical comedy in Stalinist Russia and later in the eastern European satellite comedies, with many clips from the films and commentary from the survivors. Although some of the Stalinist films look laughingly bad (The Bright Road (?) being a notable exception), the films from the sixties actually look pretty good. "My Wife Wants to Sing," "The White Mouse," and "Midnight Revue" look particularly entertaining. The producers had to contend with the censors, who had the power to decide what was politically correct, which led to some confusion, humorous in retrospect, since the people whom the censors were trying to appease were the very people who supported making the films to begin with! Since musical comedies were fairly rare behind the Iron Curtain--there were only something like forty made in forty years--they had a disproportionate effect upon their audiences, who made major hits of some of the films.

    I notice that the sound for the sixties films was much better. The directors often had to make do with antiquated equipment, and stringent power regulations--they had to film in seven minute takes or less--and dangerous officicrats.

    I also notice that "West Side Story" seems to have had a strong influence on "Hot Summer." The later films may not measure up to "Singin' in the Rain," but they certainly look like they beat the hell out of "Bye Bye Birdy"
    8Quinoa1984

    insightful in its history and entertaining in the spectacle of the clips

    I wonder if I could take sitting through a whole musical comedy from Russia or East Germany or other countries that for decades put out almost always propagandistic film, anti-fascist films, anti-war films (as this documentary points out) that just reflected the dark, grueling times under Stalin and life behind the Iron curtain. It's fascinating then to see the other side of the coin, the sorts of clowns and rebels with music at their side to try and please the masses more often than not stuck in the Socialist walk of life. One film actually seemed rather impressive, called Jolly Fellows by the pioneer of the very small group of musical filmmakers, Grigori Aleksandrov. From the clip(s) I saw of that film, I'd wager that it was one of the only works to actually step out of itself and go into just wild, manic, make-you-laugh kind of mode. But as this film shows, if you were a filmmaker looking to entertain, it better be with a 'message'.

    Through interviews, some occasional quasi-dramatizations (of Russia/Germany/etc's sort of motion picture association) at the censorship table, and clips, one gets the full picture of what it was like- both behind the scenes and on the screen- to just make sheer entertainment for the masses. Some of the films (well, most of them, as apparently only 14 screened over 40 years in the countries mentioned) made a good chunk of change, but for what purpose really? One also gets drawn into the culture of it all, how it differs greatly from the American way of 'if it works, make em while they're hot' attitude. But at the same time, perhaps out of this repression, some interesting, funny, and (from what I saw) up-beat films were made. They might've been fairly typical of what was asked to be shown to the masses, under Stalin's fond but demanding terms, like life with tractors. It gets to be even juicier a story though as we get shown what it was like in the 60's, the last wave of musical comedies, as rock and roll and pop tunes finally hit their airwaves.

    In short, some good stuff...but only if interested, really. I was shown the film in a class on documentary films, and half the class fell asleep. So be warned on the one hand, though on the other if looking for it, it can make for a really rewarding trip into European film history.

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    Storyline

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    Did you know

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    • Quotes

      Narrator: This is the odyssey of a filmmaker searching for music, fun and colors in the world of ambiguity and suspicion - the world behind the Iron Curtain.

    • Crazy credits
      The end credits dedicate the film "to Karl Marx, without whom none of this would have been necessary."
    • Connections
      Featured in The Movie Show: Episode dated 15 June 1997 (1997)

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    Details

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    • Release date
      • June 25, 1997 (United States)
    • Countries of origin
      • France
      • Germany
    • Languages
      • German
      • Russian
      • Polish
      • Romanian
      • Bulgarian
      • Czech
    • Also known as
      • Истсайдская история
    • Filming locations
      • DEFA Studio für Dokfilm, Babelsberg, Potsdam, Brandenburg, Germany(Studio)
    • Production companies
      • Anda Film
      • Canal+
      • DocStar
    • See more company credits at IMDbPro

    Tech specs

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    • Runtime
      1 hour 18 minutes
    • Color
      • Black and White
      • Color

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