Conferences and Institutes at the DEFA Film Library

The DEFA Film Library has hosted five major, international conferences and institutes to date.

The Cinema of Eastern Germany, 1997: In 1997 the DEFA Film Library hosted the first North American conference on the cinema of the GDR, attended by over 120 scholars from eight countries. Selected papers from the conference are scheduled to appear in the journal New German Critique.
Click here for a program from the 1997 conference.

The Power of Images: Representing Germany Ten Years after Reunification, 1999: Principal conference events were presented at the Hotel Northampton, with films and exhibits at other Northampton Film Festival locations. Attended by over 120 scholars from 6 countries, the conference successfully stimulated discussion of German culture at the end of the 20^th Century in the contexts of interdisciplinary scholarship as well as public cultural outreach. Selected articles will appear in the journal German Politics and Society.
Click here for a program from the 1999 conference.

East German Summer Film Institute: Interdisciplinary Approaches to the DEFA Film: Held June 25-30, 2001. This Institute was held at Smith College and focused on the teaching of specific themes in DEFA film, as well as DEFA in the context of Anglo-American film studies.
Click here to see an Institute program.

East German Summer Film Institute: DEFA and Eastern European Cinemas: Held July 7-13, 2003.  This Institute was held at Smith College, utilizing an interdisciplinary approach to national culture and history and fostering modes of analysis that transcend national boundaries. In particular the complicated relationship between the GDR cinema and the cinemas of USSR, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Bulgaria and Romania was investigated.
Click here to see an Institute program.

NEH Summer Film Institute: Changing Worlds, Shifting Narratives: Held July 6-29, 2005.  This Institute was held at Smith College and examined recent changes in Europe that have challenged the unique transatlantic cultural connections of past decades, as well as the asymmetrical historical narratives that have been presumed by disciplines closely associated with German studies in the U.S.  The scholars in attendance were invited to reassess their own viewpoints on transnational dynamics and discover how differing contemporary experience and disciplinary narratives equip German and U.S. scholars for creative, informed and relevant study of Europe.
Click here to see an Institute Program.

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