SAT. OCT. 20, 2018 @ 05.00 PM

GDR, 1967, 91 min, Color

Director: Joachim Hasler
Cast: Urta Bühler, Chris Doerk, Frank Schöbel, Werner Lierck
For summer vacation, two groups of high school students hitchhike to the Baltic Sea, where fun and trouble mix to create ties of friendship and love!
While hitchhiking to the Baltic, a group of twelve girls from Leipzig meets a group of eleven boys from Karl Marx Stadt and they take bets on who will get to the Baltic first. Naturally, the girls have an advantage over the boys when it comes to hitchhiking, so the boys have to make up for this blow to their egos. When the two groups finally meet up on a Baltic beach, the posturing continues; but there is not much cohesion and couples form and withdraw from the group. The love triangle between Brit, Wolf and Kai starts to take center stage.

After DEFA made a number of “pessimistic” films for teenagers, this musical was a breakthrough into unrestrained entertainment and was one of East Germany’s top box-office hits. Hot Summer was featured in the 1997 documentary on East Bloc musicals, Eastside Story.

Often described as East Germany’s own version of Grease, Hot Summer has developed a cult following since its 1993 screening on German TV.

 

Joachim Hasler was born in Berlin in 1929. He started his working carrier with an apprenticeship as a photographer at a film duplication facility and at the Agfa film laboratories in Wolfen.

He went on to work as an assistant director of photography at the Defa studio for Feature Films, where he met Reimar Kuntze and Bruno Mondi. Hasler’s first major projects as a director of photography include the visually interesting films Die Unbesiegbaren, Kein Hüsung, and Der schweigende Stern.

When director Artur Pohl was severely injured in an accident and could not continue the production of the feature film Spielbank Affäre (1957), Hasler took over his duties as (uncredited) director. This marked the beginning of his second career as a director.

From the mid-1960s on, Hasler directed successful musical comedies, including Heißer Sommer, which starred the East German pop artists Frank Schöbel and Chris Doerk and became a cult classic. Hasler retired from film-making in 1984. In 1995, he passed away in Berlin.