deutsche film aktiengesellschaft

Whereas occupying powers in the West were wary of a rapid revival of the substantial and developed German film industry and feared the spread of propaganda, Soviet Allied forces in East Germany encouraged its reestablishment as a medium of re-education and de-Nazification after twelve years of fascist rule and ceremonially founded the DEFA on this day in 1946 as the first post war movie production studio in the partitioned nation. The premier film Die Mörder sind unter uns (The Murderers Among Us) opened nine days prior to the celebratory ceremony. Dissolved in 1992 after reunification, the catalogue of nearly one thousand feature films, eight hundred animations, six thousand documentaries and news reels—plus dubbed foreign films numbering four-thousand, was acquired by Vivindi-Universal but much of the content is available for free at the PROGRESS distribution site which was established four years DEFA to handles its releases and conserve its extensive archives.