German films to be screened as part of summer institute
Twelve German films, most never released in the U.S., will be presented at Smith College and Pleasant Street Theater in Northampton from July 12-17. The films accompany the Fifth Biennial Summer Film Institute organized by DEFA Film Library.
Most of the films are in the original German version, but four have English subtitles. All screenings are free and open to the public.
The films were made between 1940 and 1974. The series begins with a pairing of Nazi-era biopic on Bismarck, the “Iron Chancellor,” and the Cold War celebration of Communist icon Ernst Thälmann. Later films include comedies and love stories, as well as a wide-screen color extravaganza adapted from Offenbach’s operetta “Orpheus in der Unterwelt.”
Co-directed by Sabine Hake of the University of Texas at Austin and Larson Powell of the University of Missouri-Kansas City, the week-long seminar will bring together a group of 25 scholars from eight countries and various disciplines for discussions and screenings. This year marks the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall and the end of the Cold War and the seminar will focus on media historical perspectives often neglected in scholarship that follows Cold War national boundaries or focuses on thematic and textual readings. Among the points participants will discuss are the historical continuities between Ufa and DEFA, film authorship and ideology, film “Stars” in a socialist context, images of everyday life in cinema, and the relationship between film aesthetics, technology and studio production.
The institute’s title is "Rewriting (East) German Cinema: Issues in Film Methodology and Historiography," and its major funding is provided by the DEFA Stiftung (Berlin) and the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD, New York). Co-hosts are German studies and film studies at Smith College, the Amherst Cinema/Pleasant Street Theater, and UMass Amherst. Other co-sponsors in the Five Colleges are listed on the institute website along with more complete information about the films.
More Information
Film blurbs and schedule
July 9, 2009.
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