Slatan Theodor Dudow (, Zlatan Dudov) (30 January 1903 - 12 July 1963) was a Bulgarian born film director and screenwriter who made a number of films during the Weimar Republic and in East Germany.
Biography
Early life and career
Dudow was born in Zaribrod, Bulgaria (today Dimitrovgrad, Serbia). In 1922, he emigrated to Berlin with the intention of becoming an architect. He gave up this plan and began studying theatre in 1923, first under Emmanuel Reicher, and then, from 1925 to 1926, as a theatre studies student under Max Herrmann at the university. He worked with Leopold Jessner and Jürgen Fehling, served as a chorus member under Erwin Piscator, and was a director's assistant to Fritz Lang on the production of Metropolis. During this time, Dudow also ran a bookstore with his wife and worked as a foreign correspondent for a Bulgarian newspaper. In 1929, he visited the Soviet Union, where he met Vladimir Mayakovsky and Sergei Eisenstein in Moscow and eventually, Bertolt Brecht. After his return from the USSR, Dudow directed Brecht's theatrical piece, The Decision (Die Massnahme), and began his film directing career. He was commissioned by the left-wing, Soviet-German production company Prometheus-Film to direct a short film, Wie der Berliner Arbeiter wohnt (1929), as part of the documentary series Wie lebt der Berliner Arbeiter? Dudow's first feature, Kuhle Wampe (To Whom Does the World Belong?, 1932) was a collaboration with Brecht (who provided the script and helped finance the project), Hanns Eisler, and Ernst Ottwalt. It was banned because it was perceived as being politically subversive.
Exile and activism
A member of the Communist Party of Germany (Kommunistische Partei Deutschlands, or KPD), Dudow was arrested by the Nazis shortly after they took power in January 1933. He was soon expelled from Germany as a Bulgarian citizen, but was unable to return to Bulgaria for reasons unknown (and to which Brecht alludes in a July 1933 letter to the Russian playwright Sergei Tretyakov). He made his way to France sometime in 1934, and remained there under constant threat of expulsion until 1939/1940, when he went to Switzerland. In Paris, Dudow completed the film Seifenblasen, which he had begun working on in Berlin, and also staged Brecht's Furcht und Elend des Dritten Reichs. He also began working on his comedy Der Feigling. In Switzerland, Dudow continued work on three further dramatic comedies, Das Narrenparadies, Der leichtgläubige Thomas, and Der Weltuntergang. Several of his plays, along with theoretical writings on drama, were later published in the German Democratic Republic (GDR) under the pseudonym Stefan Brodwin.