Sandman - The Story of a Socialist Superman (Sandmann - Historien om en sosialistisk supermann)

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Sandman - The Story of a Socialist Superman
Original title	Sandmann - Historien om en sosialistisk supermann
Type	Documentaries
Director	Jannicke Systad Jacobsen
Short summary	SANDMANN – THE STORY OF A SOCIALIST SUPERMAN portraits the rise and fall of socialism in East Germany seen through the life of Sandmann – Germany’s oldest and most popular children’s TV character, born in 1959 in East Germany.
Summary	A great deal of puppet animation from Eastern European countries was shown on the children’s programmes on Norwegian television in the 1970ies. The one which probably made the greatest impression on my generation and me was Sandmann. But as a child I wasn’t too occupied with ideology... Many years later I meet Sandmann again, and discovered the films to a large extent deals with promoting the socialist ideology of East Germany. Sandmann was created in 1959 by East German TV as a result of a race with West German TV to prove socialism was more efficient than capitalism. East Germany won, and since then Sandmann has put several generations of East Germans to sleep with his bed time stories and dream powder. Sandmann is a fairytale character, but he inhabits the real world, an idealised version of East Germany. Sandmann is always at the right place at the right time; he drives a Trabant, he marches with the Jungpioneers, he even travels in Space! With daily broadcast Sandmann promoted the ideas of socialism to his audience; the East German children. He showed the future optimism, technical development and solidarity. The plots of the films have changed as the East German society has changed, and Sandmann’s life goes parallel to the history of East Germany. This peculiar and slightly different historical documentary portrays the rise and fall of socialism in East Germany seen through life and films of Sandmann
Cast	Sandmann, Walter Ulbricht, John F. Kennedy, Sigmund Jahn, Erich Honecker, Mikhail Gorbatchev, Ronald Reagan, Helmut Kohl, Harald Serowski, Volker Petzold, Sabine Preuschof, Sabine Berger, Ulrike Plehn, Kristian Lippold
Screenplay	Jannicke Systad Jacobsen
D.O.P	Patrick Sæfstrøm
Editor	Jon Endre Mørk
Composer	Jon Platou Selvig
Sound	Baard H. Ingebretsen, The Chimney Pot
Producer	Hanne Myren
Production company	Medieoperatørene as
Country of origin	Norway
Release date (national)	2005-05-15
Technical information
Format	DIGIBETA
Colour	Colour - B/W
Length in min's	52
Festival participation	2005 Norwegian Documentary Film Festival Volda 2005 Norwegian Short Film Festival Grimstad 2005 Uppsala Int'l Short Film Festival 2005 M-DOX, Malmö, Sweden 2006 Grenzland Filmtage 2006 Kristiansand International Children's Film Festival
URL	http://www.mop.no

Sandmann in his Trabant on Alexanderplatz

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Director biography:
Director Jannicke Systad Jacobsen Jannicke Systad Jacobsen (b.1975) has studied film directing with focus on documentaries at FAMU – The National Filmschool of the Czech Republic and London International Film School. She has also studied Dramaturgy/Drama and Social Anthropology at the University of Oslo.

Filmography:
1998: Nothing to Hide (graduation film LIFS)
2001: A Little Red Dot
2002: The Stamp and the Lighthouse
2003: War on Paranoia
2004: Klovnebarna (short, in production),
2004: Sandman (TV documentary, in production)