Bringing the War Home to the United States and East Germany: In the Year of the Pig and Pilots in Pajamas

Abstract: In the late 1960s—at the height of the Vietnam War—two documentaries produced in opposition to the crisis were released in the United States and East Germany. Bridging the Cold War’s mythic cultural divide, In the Year of the Pig (produced by the American independent filmmaker Emile de Antonio in 1968) and Pilots in Pajamas (a 1967 joint effort by the East German state filmmakers Walter Heynowski and Gerhard Scheumann) represent parallel projects, in terms of both topic and commitment to critical mass-media practices. This article posits that in addition to their advocacy for the end of the war in Vietnam, the filmmakers used the crisis to critique domestic mass media and to model its alternative as a national, even patriotic, necessity.