Byg, DEFA Foundation director speak at Chicago film series

Professor Barton Byg, founding director of the campus’s DEFA Film Library, and Ralf Schenk, director of the DEFA Foundation in Berlin, were featured “In Conversation” on March 7 at the Spertus Institute for Jewish Learning and Leadership in Chicago.

 

The event, “Flashbacks: East German Films on Cold War Screens,” culminated a three-month series of DEFA film screeningshosted by Spertus, the Goethe Institute Chicago and the Gene Siskel Film Center.

 

After his visit to Chicago, Schenk visited UMass Amherst, where he presented a talk on “Spies and Secret Agents in East German Film” on March 12. While in Amherst, Schenk also visited the DEFA Film Library and met with Julie Hayes, dean of Humanities and Fine Arts, Catherine Portugues, director of the Interdepartmental Program in Film Studies, and Rob Cox, director of Special Collections and University Archives. Schenk's stay concluded with a visit to the Five College Repository, the former Cold War bunker where the DEFA film prints are stored.

 

Schenk became director of the DEFA Foundation (Berlin) last year. According to Byg, the DEFA Foundation is the principal partner in the establishment and growth of the DEFA Film Library. “It administers on behalf of the German people the intellectual property which DEFA films represent, but also has provided the DEFA Film Library and its partners with support of the work with this cinematic legacy since its inception,” he said.

 

The principal U.S. curatorial consultant for the DEFA events in Chicago was Hiltrud Schulz of the DEFA Film Library.

 

The Spertus Institute and Goethe Institute Chicago hosted a film series (and the Goethe Institute had mounted an exhibition) titled “Shadows and Sojourners: Images of Jews and Anti-Fascism in East German Film,” that was curated by Sky Arndt-Briggs, executive director of the DEFA Film Library, and Elke Schieber of the Filmmuseum Potsdam.