Pilots in Pyjamas (1968), a four-part documentary on the Vietnam War by GDR filmmakers Walter Heynowski and Gerhard Scheumann by Lauren Cuthbert

Lauren’s research focuses on the films of GDR documentary filmmakers Walter Heynowski and Gerhard Scheumann, who made multiple documentaries opposing the Vietnam War during the 1960s and 1970s. Although they first worked under the umbrella of the GDR’s state-owned film production company, in 1969 Heynowski and Scheumann were given their own production company, named Studio H&S. This was quite a privilege in the functionally totalitarian GDR, as it gave them economic autonomy and greater control over the content of the films they made.

Studio H&S’s films opposing the Vietnam War were varied in scope. They produced short films of 3-5 minutes in length that were intended to generate anti-war feelings among the East German populace, and also significantly longer films including a four-part documentary entitled Pilots in Pyjamas (1968), which involved Heynowski and Scheumann travelling to Vietnam and interviewing ten US pilots who had been captured as prisoners of war by the North Vietnamese Army.

Lauren’s research brings together Heynowski and Scheumann’s Vietnam films with the overarching theme of memory studies, specifically Michael Rothberg’s notion of ‘multidirectional memory’, in which he argues that a group’s memories of complex and painful histories can benefit from comparison with other similar memories belonging to different groups.

YouTube Link to Pilots in Pyjamas (1968): https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLlzhtPD1q6G98ruJqmwAWZPZrhEc_3gRH

Bio
Lauren is currently a PGR student at Aberdeen, specifically situated in the German department. Lauren received a BA in German from King’s College London, and an MA in Creative Writing from Newcastle University. Lauren is originally from Jarrow, a town in the North East of England famous for the 1936 Jarrow March, when 200 crusaders walked from Jarrow to London to protest unemployment and poverty in the area, following the closure of the shipyard which employed many workers in Jarrow. Outside of their research, Lauren’s interests lie in horror films, films about the Vietnam War, and crocheting and various other kinds of fibre arts, though Laurent can’t knit to save their life.