Icarus Films Selects Oct. 1 For The Domestic DVD Debut Of Director Lars Kraume's The Silent Revolution

Icarus Films will be teaming up with France’s premiere film distribution company, Distrib Films, on Oct. 1 for the domestic DVD debut of director Lars Kraume’s film adaptation of Dietrich Garstka’s 2006 biographical book, “Das Schweigende Klassenzimmer,” which arrives in the home entertainment marketplace as The Silent Revolution.

1956, East Germany, the iron fist of Communist rule and the well-oiled propaganda machine can’t contain news filtering in from the outside.   This will be tested at a prestigious high school when students learn of the Hungarian Uprising and decide to hold a silent protest.

Organized by a student by the name of Erik (Jonas Dassler), the simple plan is to just hold one minute of silence in the classroom to protest the brutal crackdown on dissidents in Hungary.   It might have gone unnoticed — and in one sense it was pretty feeble — but little things can have major consequences as the students involved in the protest will soon learn.

The act of defiance takes place and their teacher, Lehrer Mosel (played by Rainer Reiners), thinks initially that the protest is directed at him.   Erik confesses its true purpose and Mosel immediately reports him to the headmaster of the school, Direktor Schwarz (Florian Lukas), who tries to downplay the incident.   Nothing to see here … move along, move along!!

Little do Erik and his fellow students, most notably Lena (Lena Klenke), Paul (Isaiah Michalski) and Theo (Leonard Scheicher), realize what is about to unfold.  The state will take notice, family members — with their own special interests — will be set against them and forces will be put to work to breakup the group and crush them one by one.

The Silent Revolution speaks of an era where protests and questioning of authority were meet with terror.   No matter how small or seemingly insignificant, these actions must be crushed and the people responsible dealt with harshly and made examples of — cross the line and this too will be your fate.   

This powerful story, based on actual events, is presented in German with English subtitles.

Also heading to DVD from Icarus Films is award-winning documentary filmmaker Sandhya Suri’s Around India with a Movie Camera.   The street date for this unique historical “behind-the-scenes” of India leading up to its independence after World War II — using the “new technology” of the motion picture — will be Sept. 24.

Sandhya Suri, working with the British Film Institute’s National Archive, has assembled an impressive collection of India-focused films, from both amateurs and professionals, which showcase the day-to-day life of the subcontinent’s citizens from the dawn of filmmaking up to 1947.   Silent films, travelogues, some home movies and small documentaries with a unique focus on the lives of the people of India have been assembled into a narrative that shades light on what it was like to be Indian when India was the “Crown Jewel” of the British Empire.

Bonus goodies included with director Sandhya Suri’s Around India with a Movie Camera are a 31-minute silent film titled Home Life, the 11-minute short title Indian Scrapbook and six minutes of a silent montage titled Scenes at His Excellency the Viceroy’s Garden Party at Belvedere.