Sons of Great Bear Blu-ray

'The Sons of Great Bear' Director: Josef Mach (1966) Eureka Masters of Cinema Limited Edition Blu-ray | 2K restoration | German w/ English subtitles

By the mid-1960s, Westerns had become extremely popular in West Germany due to a series of films adapted from the novels of Karl May. In response, DEFA – the state-operated studio of East Germany or the GDR – made its own film set in the Old West. But The Sons of Great Bear wasn’t just designed to compete with West German genre films – it was also intended as a pointed corrective to the American frontier myth, pitting its Native American protagonists against violent white settlers in a battle for survival.

As a young man, Tokei-Ihto - a Native American warrior belonging to a Dakota tribe - witnesses his father’s murder at the hands of a scout who suspects there is gold to be found on the Dakota lands. Later, Tokei-Ihto is forced to defend his people from the scout as he tries to take possession of the gold by any means necessary.

Adapted from Liselotte Welskopf-Henrich's book series of the same name, The Sons of Great Bear made a star of Gojko Mitić and launched an entire series of Westerns at DEFA, known in East Germany as Indianerfilme and historically nicknamed “Red Westerns” due to their socialist politics.

Limited Edition contents:
- Collector’s booklet featuring new writing on The Sons of Great Bear and DEFA’s approach to the Western by Mariana Ivanova, Academic Director of the DEFA Film Library
- O-Card slipcase featuring new artwork
- Limited Edition of 2000 copies

Special features include:
- Audio commentary by Western scholar Jenny Barrett
- Discussion of The Sons of Great Bear in a global context with Austin Fisher, author of Radical Frontiers in the Spaghetti Western
- Video essay on the depiction of Native American life in The Sons of Great Bear by Lee Broughton, author of The Euro-Western
- Archival newsreel featuring a report on the making of DEFA’s first Western