University of Massachusetts Amherst
The University of Massachusetts Amherst (UMass Amherst, UMass) is a public research university in Amherst, Massachusetts and the sole public land-grant university in Commonwealth of Massachusetts. Founded in 1863 as an agricultural college, it ...
is the only research center and archive outside of Germany devoted to a broad spectrum of filmmaking from and related to the former German Democratic Republic (GDR,
East Germany
East Germany, officially the German Democratic Republic (GDR; german: Deutsche Demokratische Republik, , DDR, ), was a country that existed from its creation on 7 October 1949 until its dissolution on 3 October 1990. In these years the state ...
). Researchers are welcome to the archive by pre-arranging their visit.
The DEFA Film Library’s mission is twofold: to make East German films available and better known outside of Germany, and to broaden the understanding of filmmaking in the GDR and Eastern and Central Europe through critical interdisciplinary and transnational scholarship. In order to achieve this mission, the nonprofit organization mounts a multi-tiered effort. Through preservation, research initiatives, production, and cultural programming, the DEFA Film Library:
* houses an extensive archive and collection of 35- and 16-mm prints, DCPs, DVDs, film files, books, periodicals, documents and images;
* creates high-quality English-subtitled East German films in various formats, often with educational bonus features that are distributed on DVD or via streaming in North America and in English-speaking countries, as well as worldwide through the international network of Goethe-Institutes;
* offers key programs for teachers and for public and scholarly outreach including touring film series, biennial summer film institutes and the visiting artist program.
* awards an annual Graduate Student Essay Prize (since 2021) and the DEFA Film Library Programming Award (since 2023).
Students from UMass Amherst and the Five Colleges are involved in all aspects of the DEFA Film Library. Through working on productions, public programming, sales and distribution, and teaching and outreach activities, they gain valuable non-academic experiences in translation, subtitling and research, as well as library, conference and arts management.
In February 2019, the DEFA Film Library Endowment was established to support and enhance the mission and activities of the DEFA Film Library at UMass Amherst.
About the DEFA Film Library
History
The DEFA Film Library at UMass Amherst was established in the late 1980s by Barton Byg, professor of Film and German Studies at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. The signing of an UMass Memorandum of Understanding on September 23, 1993, marks the DEFA Film Library's official founding. Byg's idea was to make films from the East German DEFA Studios more available and widely known in North America and to broaden popular and scholarly understanding of filmmaking in the former GDR by critically exploring its aesthetic, political and ideological bases.
As the post-unification fate of East Germany's film heritage was being decided in Germany, the DEFA Film Library's collection grew bit by bit. In 1997, an agreement with two German partners—
Progress Film-Verleih
Progress is the movement towards a refined, improved, or otherwise desired state. In the context of progressivism, it refers to the proposition that advancements in technology, science, and social organization have resulted, and by extension wi ...
and the DEFA-Stiftung—brought a collection of East German film journals and the largest collection of 16mm and 35mm prints of DEFA films outside of Germany to the UMass Amherst campus. Also housed in the DEFA Film Library archive are 16mm prints that were donated by the US-GDR Friendship Committee and the former East German Embassy. This part of the collection includes films that were made specifically to report on and represent the GDR overseas.
In 1998, ICESTORM International Inc., which owned the international video rights for DEFA films, brought East German titles on VHS to North America. ICESTORM and the DEFA Film Library collaborated on the selection of 61 titles for the first U.S. release of subtitled DEFA films on video in 1999. On October 1, 2001, the DEFA Film Library took over the distribution of these titles for ICESTORM International. Since 2003, the DEFA Film Library has produced DVDs for the North American market, expanding in 2014 to educational video on demand. Since 2005, the DEFA Film Library has produced high-quality English subtitles for these films.
Circulating Print Archive
The DEFA Film Library's collection of theatrical film prints has now grown to almost 500 prints that have been screened at venues throughout North America, including: The
Museum of Modern Art
The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) is an art museum located in Midtown Manhattan, New York City, on 53rd Street between Fifth and Sixth Avenues.
It plays a major role in developing and collecting modern art, and is often identified as one of ...
,
Anthology Film Archives
Anthology Film Archives is an international center for the preservation, study, and exhibition of film and video, with a particular focus on independent, experimental, and avant-garde cinema.New York Jewish Film Festival in New York; the
Harvard Film Archive
The Harvard Film Archive (HFA) is a film archive and cinema located in the Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Dedicated to the collection, preservation and exhibition of film, the HFA houses a c ...
and the
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
The Museum of Fine Arts (often abbreviated as MFA Boston or MFA) is an art museum in Boston, Massachusetts. It is the 20th-largest art museum in the world, measured by public gallery area. It contains 8,161 paintings and more than 450,000 works ...
; the
American Film Institute
The American Film Institute (AFI) is an American nonprofit film organization that educates filmmakers and honors the heritage of the motion picture arts in the United States. AFI is supported by private funding and public membership fees.
Leade ...
and the
National Gallery of Art
The National Gallery of Art, and its attached Sculpture Garden, is a national art museum in Washington, D.C., United States, located on the National Mall, between 3rd and 9th Streets, at Constitution Avenue NW. Open to the public and free of char ...
in Washington, D.C.; the
San Francisco Museum of Modern Art
The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA) is a modern and contemporary art museum located in San Francisco, California. A nonprofit organization, SFMOMA holds an internationally recognized collection of modern and contemporary art, and was ...
; the
Museum of Fine Arts, Houston
The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston (MFAH), is an art museum located in the Houston Museum District of Houston, Texas. With the recent completion of an eight-year campus redevelopment project, including the opening of the Nancy and Rich Kinder Build ...
; the
Los Angeles County Museum of Art
The Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) is an art museum located on Wilshire Boulevard in the Miracle Mile, Los Angeles, California, Miracle Mile vicinity of Los Angeles. LACMA is on Museum Row, adjacent to the La Brea Tar Pits (George C. Pa ...
and the
Hammer Museum
The Hammer Museum, which is affiliated with the University of California, Los Angeles, is an art museum and cultural center known for its artist-centric and progressive array of exhibitions and public programs. Founded in 1990 by the entrepreneur- ...
in Los Angeles; the
Toronto International Film Festival
The Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF, often stylized as tiff) is one of the largest publicly attended film festivals in the world, attracting over 480,000 people annually. Since its founding in 1976, TIFF has grown to become a permane ...
; the
Wexner Center for the Arts
The Wexner Center for the Arts is the Ohio State University's "multidisciplinary, international laboratory for the exploration and advancement of contemporary art". The Wexner Center opened in November 1989, named in honor of the father of Limite ...
in Columbus, Ohio;
Real Art Ways
Real Art Ways is a non-profit art space established in 1975. Located at 56 Arbor Street in the Parkville neighborhood of Hartford, Connecticut, Real Art Ways exhibits visual art, houses an independent cinema and presents live music, theater, and ...
in Hartford, Connecticut; and Darkside Cinema in Corvallis, Oregon.
Most visible have been large-scale touring film series that are co-curated by the DEFA Film Library and various partners and which premiere at prestigious cultural institutions. In 2005, The Museum of Modern Art and the
Goethe-Institut
The Goethe-Institut (, GI, en, Goethe Institute) is a non-profit German cultural association operational worldwide with 159 institutes, promoting the study of the German language abroad and encouraging international cultural exchange and ...
New York presented the most comprehensive retrospective of East German films ever screened in North America, ''Rebels with a Cause: The Cinema of East Germany''. In 2009, a series commemorating the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Wall, ''WENDE FLICKS: Last Films from East Germany'', premiered at the
Los Angeles County Museum of Art
The Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) is an art museum located on Wilshire Boulevard in the Miracle Mile, Los Angeles, California, Miracle Mile vicinity of Los Angeles. LACMA is on Museum Row, adjacent to the La Brea Tar Pits (George C. Pa ...
, the Hammer Museum, the
Wende Museum
The Wende Museum is an art museum, historical archive of the Cold War, and center for creative community engagement in Culver City, California.
Mission
''Wende'' (pronounced “venda”) is a German word that translates into English as “ ...
,
UCLA
The University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) is a public land-grant research university in Los Angeles, California. UCLA's academic roots were established in 1881 as a teachers college then known as the southern branch of the California St ...
and the Goethe-Institut Los Angeles.
For a list of selected curated film series, please visit the website of the DEFA Film Library.
Research at the DEFA Film Library
The on-site research collection includes over 1,000 35 and 16mm prints, DVDs, .mp4 files and over 400 books and periodicals (''Filmspiegel'', ''Kino DDR'', ''Film und Fernsehen'', ''epd Film'', ''Deutsche Filmkunst'').
In addition, Special Collections and University Archives (SCUA) at UMass Amherst's W.E.B. Du Bois Library owns the collection "Social Change and Movements for Social Change," which includes a Cold War Culture Collection with an emphasis on East Germany.
Other Collections:
The Graphic Art of Anke Feuchtenberger (a comprehensive collection of early works—including film and theater posters and smaller-scale pieces—made by (East) German artist Anke Feuchtenberger; donated by film director Jörg Foth).
The Carlos Foth Collection (documents the work of the East German Prosecutor General Carlos Foth, a key player in the legal effort to investigate and punish Nazi war criminals. The collection includes correspondence, case files and legal documents including press articles, speeches, reports, photographs and other research materials and relevant publications. Topics include NS trials, i.e. Robert Mulka, Hans Globke, Adolf Eichmann and Alois Brunner; nuclear weapons /IALANA; East German legal advisory in Cambodia; Weinhold Case and border control in the GDR).
The Jörg Foth Collection (film scripts, festival catalogs, correspondence, miscellaneous film production and project documents)
The Volkmar Andrä Collection (Tapes, Vinyl LPs, catalogs, and miscellaneous materials of VEB Deutsche Schallplatten)
Programming for scholars
The DEFA Film Library supports an international network of scholars with a range of regular programming that has helped shape national and international research agendas on (East) German cinema.
* In 1997 and 1999, the DEFA Film Library organized two international conferences on East German cinema in the Five College area, in collaboration with PROGRESS Film-Verleih and the DEFA Foundation in Berlin. The DEFA Film Library collaborated on a third international conference with the Academy for Film and Television in
Potsdam-Babelsberg
Babelsberg () is the largest quarter (''Stadtteil'') of Potsdam, the capital city of the German state of Brandenburg. The affluent neighbourhood named after a small hill on the Havel river is famous for Babelsberg Palace and Park, part of the Palac ...
in November 2011.
* Since 2001, the DEFA Film Library has hosted a biennial Summer Film Institute. Combining workshop discussions with screenings of a range of films—including little-known and rare titles—the Institutes are known for their stimulation of new research topics. (For a list of Summer Film Institute topics, see the DEFA Film Library’s website)
* The DEFA Film Library organizes or participates in panels and panel series at national conferences, including German Studies Association (GSA) and Association for Slavic, East European and Eurasian Studies (ASEEES).
Visiting Artists and Scholars
The DEFA Film Library Visiting Filmmakers program brings German film directors to colleges, universities and cultural institutions throughout North America. Featured directors have included
Frank Beyer
Frank Paul Beyer (; 26 May 1932 – 1 October 2006) was a German film director. In East Germany he was one of the most important film directors, working for the state film monopoly DEFA and directed films that dealt mostly with the Nazi era ...
, Jürgen Böttcher, Lutz Dammbeck, Andreas Dresen, Jörg Foth, Iris Gusner, Peter Kahane, Helke Misselwitz, Siegfried Kühn, Herrmann Zschoche and
Rainer Simon
Rainer Simon (born 11 January 1941) is a German film director and screenwriter. He directed 17 films between 1964 and 2000. His ''How to Marry a King'' (1969) and ''Six Make it Through the World'' (1972) are highly imaginative adaptations of fai ...
.
Other visiting artists and scholars have included:
* Directors:
Egon Günther
Egon Günther (30 March 1927 – 31 August 2017) in:
,
Thomas Heise
Thomas Heise (born August 22, 1955 in East Berlin), is a German documentary filmmaker.
Life and work
Heise is the son of philosophy professor Wolfgang Heise. He was a printer's apprentice between 1971 and 1973. After a year in the National Peopl ...
, Dietmar Hochmuth, Günter Jordan, Bernd Sahling, Evelyn Schmidt, Andrea Simon, Andreas Voigt,
Lothar Warneke
Lothar Warneke (15 September 1936 – 5 June 2005) was a German film director, screenwriter and actor. His 1977 film ''The Incorrigible Barbara'' was entered into the 10th Moscow International Film Festival. His 1981 film '' Our Short Lif ...
Gerd Kroske Gerd or GERD may refer to:
* Gerd (given name), a list of people with the given name or nickname
* Gerd (moon), a moon of Saturn
* Gerd Island, South Orkney Islands, Antarctica
* Gastroesophageal reflux disease, a chronic symptom of mucosal damage ...
,
Vojtěch Jasný
Vojtěch Jasný (30 November 1925 – 15 November 2019) was a Czech director, screenwriter and professor who has written and directed over 50 films. Jasný made feature and documentary films in Czechoslovakia, Germany, Austria, USA & Canada, and ...
.
* Scriptwriters:
Wolfgang Kohlhaase
Wolfgang Kohlhaase (13 March 1931 – 5 October 2022) was a German screenwriter, film director, and writer. He was considered "one of the most important screenwriters in German film history", and was one of the GDR's most well-known and prolific ...
, Stefan Kolditz,
Helga Schubert
Helga Schubert (pseudonym for Helga Helm, born 7 January 1940 in Berlin) is a German psychologist and author.
Life
Helga Schubert is a daughter of a librarian, who was also active in economics, and of a Gerichtsassessor who died as a soldier in ...
.
* Composer: Stefan Carow.
* Cameraman: Thomas Plenert.
* Editor: Gudrun Steinbrück-Plenert.
Film historians and scholars: Monika Albrecht, Seán Allan, Christine Becker, Lothar Bisky, Benita Blessing, Oksana Bulgakova, Burghard Ciesla, Alexander Donev, Stephan Ehrig, April Eismann,
Thomas Elsaesser
Thomas Elsaesser (22 June 1943 – 4 December 2019) was a German film historian and professor of Film and Television Studies at the University of Amsterdam. He was also the writer and director of ''The Sun Island'', a documentary essay film abou ...
, Thomas Fox, Sabine Hake, Dina Iordanova, Konrad Jarausch, Lars Karl, Heinz Kersten, Mario Kessler, Sylvia Klötzer, Thomas Lindenberger, Claus Löser, Hanno Löwy, Tom Maulucci, Larson Powell, Eric Rentschler, Ralf Schenk, Elke Schieber, Ursula Schröter, Lu Seegers, David Shneer, Frank Stern, Evan Torner, Katie Trumpener, Annette Weinke, Johanna Frances Yunker and others.
Summer Film Institutes
''11th DEFA Summer Film Institute, UMass Amherst, June 11-17, 2023''
''HIDDEN FIGURES: Blackness and Black Experiences in East Germany''
For more information and a complete overview of past Institutes, please visit DFL website.
Curated film series
''HIDDEN FIGURES: Blackness and Black Experiences in East Germany''
023, premiere at UMass Amherst and Amherst Cinema
Free film festival that took place in tandem with the 11th biennial Summer Film Institute. It included 15 full-length and short films.
''WAGENSTEIN100''
022, premiere at Amherst Cinema
This retrospective took place on the occasion of Wagensteins 100th birthday and included four feature films by scriptwriter Angel Wagenstein and a documentary about him.
EVERYDAY POETRY: The Early Films of Helke Misselwitz
021, premiere at Anthology Film Archives, NYC & Mar del Plata Film festival, Argentina
The most comprehensive retrospective to date that included the nine films the filmmaker produced at the East German DEFA Studios.
Authority & Alterity in East German Movies
021, Virtual Festival
A free virtual Summer Film Festival including 20 full-length and short films that included 3 live Zoom events with the film directors and 7 video introductions by experts.
Black Lives in Germany: Resilience – Art – Hope
ct. 2021 – April 2022, Virtual Festival
A festival showcasing films by and discussions with Black German filmmakers, actors, scholars and activists! Recordings of all five events are available in the DEFA Film Library’s FILMBOX, a Digital Teaching Archive.
ART & POWER: LUTZ DAMMBECK
019, premiere at the National Gallery of Art, Washington D.C.
This eight-city tour included the complete cinematic oeuvre of German filmmaker and media artist Lutz Dammbeck.
For more curated film programs and detailed information, please visit the DFL website.
Faculty Research Fellows
*2014–15 Andy Räder (
University of Rostock
The University of Rostock (german: link=no, Universität Rostock) is a public university located in Rostock, Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, Germany. Founded in 1419, it is the third-oldest university in Germany. It is the oldest university in continen ...
, Germany)
*2011–12 Seán Allan (
University of Warwick
The University of Warwick ( ; abbreviated as ''Warw.'' in post-nominal letters) is a public research university on the outskirts of Coventry between the West Midlands (county), West Midlands and Warwickshire, England. The university was founded i ...
, UK)
*2010–11 Benita Blessing (
University of Vienna
The University of Vienna (german: Universität Wien) is a public research university located in Vienna, Austria. It was founded by Duke Rudolph IV in 1365 and is the oldest university in the German-speaking world. With its long and rich histor ...
, Austria)
Recognition and awards
*2013, Letter of recognition from
Bernd Neumann
Bernd Otto Neumann (born 6 January 1942) is a former German politician and since 2014 president of the German Federal Film Board (FFA).
Biography
Neumann was born in Elbing, East Prussia, now Elbląg, Poland. Following the flight and expu ...
, Minister of Culture and Media of the Federal Republic of Germany
*2011, cinefest Hamburg: Reinhold-Schünzel-Preis to Barton Byg, Founder of the DEFA Film Library
*2005, Recipient of the Programming Award of the DEFA Foundation, Berlin.
Current DEFA team
*Barton Byg (Professor Emeritus), Founding Director
*Mariana Ivanova, Academic Director
*Victoria Rizo Lenshyn, Associate Director
*Hiltrud Schulz, Production , Outreach , Contracts
*Evgeniia Trufanova, Program Assistant
*Ester Gonzalez Martin, Book & Film Collection
*Sarah Amzil, Sales & Billing
*Franchesca Viaud, Web & Tech Assistant