ON NOVEMBER 2, 1988, the short documentary film Die andere Liebe (The Other Love, dir. Helmut Kisling and Axel Otten) had its premiere. This historical event, meant as a cinematic introduction to a subsection of GDR society, marked the slow and monumental progress that had been made in the realm of gay rights in East Germany—though not necessarily on purpose—while it also illustrated the tragic backwardness of this country that was and is, in so many ways, stuck in time. Different from other nations that transitioned from communism to postcommunism, the GDR essentially dissolved into the FRG. Unlike the more popular feature film that appeared the following year (Heiner Carow's Coming Out), Die andere Liebe (DaL) is often either left out of historical narratives or only briefly mentioned. In what follows, I examine the circumstances of the film's production and appearance in East Germany while considering the role it plays in our understanding of the development of German lesbian and gay history. More specifically, this essay will provide a reading of the film that identifies its affective engagement with various parties: the anonymous individuals it profiles, the GDR audiences, and the official state-run apparatus of film production, among others.

DaL mobilizes a number of forms of affect in its sequences, engaging with its intended audience of primarily heterosexual viewers. In using “affect” instead of “emotions” here, I refer to what Clare Hemmings has called “states of being, rather than to their manifestation or interpretation as emotions.” Hemmings explains that affects, unlike drives, their fellow psychological entities, may be adapted; indeed, they can be transferred to a variety of objects instead of being oriented toward or fixated on one goal as drives are. Affect allows for a general analysis of the text's provoked responses rather than one of specific audience members’ targeted emotional responses. Although DaL is ostensibly about “love,” as we could gather from its title, the original screenplay, and parts of the final voiceover narration, I interpret it as a work of the mobilization and deflection of shame—in other words, DaL takes gay shame and transforms it into homophobic shame.