Given that the vast majority of WWII movies we see are told from the perspective of this side of the former Iron Curtain, the release of a number of films made by legendary East German studio DEFA are utterly fascinating. This month sees the DVD release of I Was Nineteen, Konrad Wolf’s 1968 film about a Red Army soldier of German descent who advances into Germany with the Soviet forces as the Third Reich collapses.

Based on the diaries of Wolf himself, I Was Nineteen is a gritty, uncompromising and dire story of a German who’s horrified at what his country’s government did. Wolf is careful to show us some decent Germans along the way (they weren’t all bitter sauerkraut) and toasts the Soviets as heroic (this is Eastern bloc propaganda, after all). Wolf depicts scenes of mass mistaken identity, as some Soviet soldiers suspect that others in Soviet uniform are in fact Germans posing as Russians. It’s an unusual and intriguing perspective on the war, punctuated by an especially devastating ending. I Was Nineteen is widely regarded as one of the most important films to come out of Germany in the post-war period.

First Run Features has just released A Musical Quartet, a DVD box set of four award-winning documentaries produced by Walter Scheuer. Entries include High Fidelity: The Adventures of the Guarneri String Quartet, Allan Miller’s capturing of the quartet’s tour of Europe and the U.S.; Small Wonders, a magnificent film about a teacher’s valiant effort to get her students to perform at Carnegie Hall; The Turandot Project, about Oscar-winning Chinese director Zhang Yimou’s staging of the Puccini opera in Beijing’s Forbidden City; and From Mao to Mozart: Isaac Stern in China, Murray Lerner’s Oscar-winning chronicle of the legendary violinist’s trek to China. These films clearly illustrate the ability musicians have to cut across cultural and political boundaries—a choice anthology of fine movies about the art of music.

by MATTHEW HAYS