Slatan Dudow was born in Zaribrod, Bulgaria, on 30 January 1903. Influenced by revolutionary ideas, Dudow moved to Berlin at nineteen. He abandoned his earlier plan to study architecture and instead studied theater with Max Herrmann from 1925 to 1926. Dudow was also fascinated with film and became a film reviewer for a Bulgarian newspaper. He was on the set for the filming of Fritz Lang’s Metropolis. Working for the International Workers’ Relief, he supported the AgitProp movement and, from 1927 to 1928, he was a chorus member in Erwin Piscator’s Theater Collective in Berlin. A trip to Moscow in 1929, where he learned more about Vladimir Mayakovsky and saw films by Eisenstein, Podovkin and others, proved decisive for his career. Upon his return from Moscow, Dudow directed the Brecht/Eisler play The Measures Taken, as he began his film career. He was commissioned to produce the short film How the Worker Lives (1930) as part of a documentary series on current issues. Kuhle Wampe, or Who Owns the World (1932) was his first feature film. In 1933, Dudow was arrested and interrogated by the Nazis. Once freed, he worked illegally on his film Soap Bubbles until he had to go underground; this film was not finished until he was in exile in France. While in France he worked on a satire of fascism entitled The Hand that Couldn’t Salute, but could not find a producer. Dudow also directed eight scenes of Brecht’s “Private Life of the Master Race,” which premiered in Paris in 1938 under the title “99%,” starring Helene Weigel and Ernst Busch. Because of his political work, Dudow was expelled from France in 1940 and fled to Switzerland. There he mainly worked on comedies, which were later published under the pseudonym Stefan Brodwin. In 1946, Dudow returned to Berlin and worked at the East German DEFA studios, first as an artistic advisor and then as a director. Slatan Dudow died in a car accident near Berlin on 12 July 1963, while working on Christine.

Filmography Christine (GDR, 1963, unfinished); Confusion of Love (GDR, 1959); The Captain of Cologne (GDR, 1956); Stronger than the Night (GDR, 1954); The Destinies of Women (GDR, 1952); Family Benthin (GDR, 1950); Our Daily Bread (GDR, 1949); Soap-Bubbles (Germany/France, 1934); Kuhle Wampe, or Who Owns the World? (Germany, 1932); Current Issues: How the Worker Lives (Germany, 1930)