Gay Today: World

Rare German Gay Film
to be Released on Video

Compiled by GayToday

Northampton, Massachusetts--Coming Out, the first and only feature film produced in East Germany to deal openly with the subject of homosexuality, is now available on video for the first time to American audiences.

Scene from Coming Out

It premiered on November 9, 1989, the exact evening of the fall of the Berlin Wall, and the following year it was awarded the prestigious Silver Bear Prize at the Berlin International Film Festival. The new release, due out in video rental stores in early September, is a remastered version of the original film with brand-new subtitles.

Never Shown in U.S. Theaters

Directed by the late Heiner Carow, Coming Out stars Matthias Freihof, Dagmar Manzel and Dirk Kummer. The fact that this film, a moving story of a young high school teacher coming to terms with his sexuality, was made and released in a suppressive political atmosphere is remarkable and was, at the time, groundbreaking.

Since its premiere, the film has toured virtually all over the world, including such disparate locales as Cairo, Copenhagen, St. Petersburg, Dublin and Los Angeles (at the Museum of Tolerance), yet has never had an official North American theatrical release.

As an added bonus, the new video release will include a 12-minute featurette highlighting the best of East German cinema. In Spring 2001, the DVD version of the film is scheduled for release and will include, among other unique features, French, Spanish and English subtitle options.

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Hollywood Behind the Wall

Icestorm International, the leading distributor of films produced by DEFA, the state-run studios of the former East Germany, is releasing Coming Out. Icestorm currently holds the world rights in all home entertainment media for the entire DEFA collection.

This "unknown" archive of more than 10,000 films produced between 1946 and the 1990s includes an eclectic array of genres produced behind the Wall and beyond. Included are classic feature films, amazing productions of fairy tales by the Brothers Grimm and Hans Christian Andersen, "banned films," documentaries and even a series of Westerns made from the Native American perspective. Icestorm works in close association with the DEFA Film Library at the University of Massachusetts Amherst.

"What is truly great about Coming Out," says Gerhard Sieber, President of Icestorm, "is that it is, first and foremost, a human story. Any person who has felt the conflicting pangs of desire and love can relate to this very honest film."