Here is the second installment of six more “Guten Tag, Wie Geht’s” films: 

10. Dirndl sprechen Bayerisch
11. Die Trauung beginnt um dreiviertel elf
12. Und weit und breit keine Tankstelle
13. Das Ziel unserer Reise ist ein Schloss
14. Vielleicht versuchen wir's einmal mit Studenten
15. Gesunder Schlaf und viel Bewegung in der frischen Luft
17. Die Mosel im Wandel der Jahrhunderte

These are third generation at least, having been transferred from 16 mm film to video tape to DVD to Windows media video. Occasionally the audio sync goes out, but it quickly returns. 

I have about 5 more to transfer to WMV – those will be compiled and uploaded perhaps next month. Then I have the remainder of the series on video, which I must transfer to digital as soon as I get a chance. 

Comments welcome. 

PS – I usually shut down at night, so if you are trying to download and there are no seeds, keep the torrent open for at least a day or so until I’m back on. I will seed this for no more than a month unless the demand is high. Please seed at least to 200% to keep these rare films alive! 

Thanks. 


From the WEB: 

There may not be a finer series of films worth studying than the ‘Guten Tag’ and ‘Guten Tag wie geht’s’ series, produced by Bayerischen Rundfunk and the Goethe Institut, in 1964-65, and 1966 respectively. Each series consisted of twenty six fifteen-minute films, was witty, charming, and consisted of funny mini-dramas embracing multi-ethnic and multi-cultural values. Entertaining, charming, funny, and occasionally thought-provoking, the films contained embedded socio-cultural messages that clashed with prejudices many North Americans still harbored toward Germans, nearly one generation after the second world war. The Germany of the mid-1960s, in the minds of many U.S. students, was eternally at the wrong end of gun-barrels, bomb-sights, and war-trials. 

To many Americans of the era, the German archetype was cold, inhuman, devoid of humor, and heavily prejudiced against people of other races and ethnic origins. In essence the Nazi and the German were one and the same. This presents a marketing problem for any company selling German language instruction films in the U.S. If Germans aren’t seen as being fun and socially progressive, people may not want to study the language, as they probably won’t be traveling to Germany on vacation. Therefore, distribution figures will be so low, that the films won’t make a profit. 

Clearly, in both ‘Guten Tag’ series, the Goethe Institut had a social agenda that went far beyond creating a simple series of language instruction films, and, as such, they are worthy of further study. On one hand, they can be cynically perceived as being successors to the successful propaganda films of the Third Reich. On the other, with their reappearing themes of humor and racial and generational co-existence, they perhaps seek to define a new reality, as Germany strove to remake itself internally, and redefine itself externally. This new Germany, it was hoped, would be perceived as a radically different one than the uncredited executive producers knew North American students would most often have otherwise seen, from a cinematic and television perspective. 

The films on tonight’s program make the case that a language film is more than just that. It serves as an introduction to the people speaking the language, and provides insight to the culture. I suspect the executive producers knew they had a big job at hand. You’ll have to judge their relative success yourself. The films are, unfortunately, out of distribution. Although widely distributed, and shown as a staple on NET (the precursor to PBS), their production values are somewhat dated. The workbooks, which at one time were easy to come by have been out-of-print for years, and can only be found with great difficulty in the most arcane of used bookshops. 

These films should be seen again, not only for their cultural merit and their socio-political orientation, but also because they’re damn fine language instruction films, with a wit and charm all their own.