29. Lots of ‘Red Westerns’ were filmed, with Native Americans as the good guys and cowboys as the bad guys
The explosion in Western movies depicting cowboys fighting Native Americans in the mid-20th century also reached behind the Iron Curtain. East German filmmakers capitalized on widespread interest in Native American culture by making their own Westerns. Known as Ostern (‘eastern’) or Red Westerns, these films depicted cowboys as villains and Native Americans as heroes. The most celebrated example of the genre, 1966’s The Sons of Great Bear, which is still hailed as a masterpiece. The Sons of Great Bear and its ilk were distributed across the Eastern Bloc and even West Germany.