#gdr

#gdr

Sung Tieu's monumental work suggests how easily one regime can be supplanted by another, cloaking the facade of the German Pavilion with a reconstruction of a communist housing complex.

Some 35 years since the demise of the East German regime, a groundbreaking series looking into the daily life in the GDR picked up an International Emmy at Monday night's award ceremony in New York. Produced by the German regional public broadcaster MDR, "Auf Fritzis Spuren Wie war das so in der DDR? (In Fritzi's Footsteps What was it like in the GDR?) took home the prize in the Kids: Factual & Entertainment category, and beat competitors from Brazil, the United Kingdom and South Africa.

Following the end of World War II in 1945, a defeated Germany was divided into four occupation zones, controlled by the Allied powers: the United States, France, Great Britain and the Soviet Union. In 1949, two states emerged: the democratic Federal Republic of Germany (FRG) in the West, and the socialist German Democratic Republic (GDR) in the East, with the latter being under Soviet control.

Brunckhorst's film tap into the convergence of irony and opportunity as characters grappling with economic and emotional upheaval seek a windfall ahead of German reunification.