Our summer virtual film series spotlights Marion Rasche, the visionary chief dramaturg and artistic director at the state-owned DEFA Studio for Animation Films in Dresden in the 1980s. Rasche teamed up with young freelance artists and together they created experimental short films that rewrote East German animation history. Our free streamed film series, Collaboration in Animation: Marion Rasche and Her Experimenting Artists, will present ten of these avant-garde films. Each Tuesday and Friday we will add a new film to our series.
Watch the Films Here
(the link will be active until September 6)
Marion Rasche studied drama and philosophy before starting as a dramaturg at the DEFA Studio for Animation Films in 1976. She became the studio’s chief dramaturg in 1981 and also took over the role as artistic director a few years later. In these positions, she was responsible not only for script development, but also for the visual design of the films. Rasche was eager to break with existing animation standards, bringing more contemporary artistic diversity into the studio. Her mission was to elevate animation into an art form.
Rasche, always a connoisseur of the fine arts, offered young artists a space to experiment with the interplay between art forms and to discover animation film as a new medium in their artistic expression. Among these artists were Lutz Dammbeck (Einmart, 1981; The Flood, 1986), Helge Leiberg (Fridolin, the Butterfly, 1982), César Olhagaray (And Everything Because of Love, 1982), and Gudrun Trendafilov (Racetrack, 1982/84), who had all graduated from academies of fine arts in Leipzig and Dresden. But she also teamed up with other freelance artists (graphic artist Steffi Bluhm, The Black Spot, 1983-2021; photographer Ulrich Lindner, Timelines, 1989; and painter and graphic artist Wolfgang Korn, Idyllic Landscape, 1984), fostering new aesthetic languages in animation.
The films the artists created directly in collaboration with Rasche as dramaturg or scenario writer were bold in form and content. The film stories were sensitive, metaphorical reflections on the artists’ daily experiences in a crumbling country: the young generation’s unrest and search for an alternative life, increasing environmental problems, and political stagnation.
Although Marion Rasche, often unconventional in her approaches, had some leeway in her position at the studio, she had to handle a balancing act between her personal artistic aspirations, including multimedia approaches of filmmaking, and the studio’s ideological duties and responsibility of fulfilling an annual production plan. Rasche, fearless in putting out art-film creations, often found herself defending the non-conformist films within the studio. Some of these films ended up banned because officials found them too controversial. The debates about the films also led to discontent among the artists, many of them leaving the studio after making just one or two films. Even though Marion Rasche gave up her studio leadership position and decided to work as a director in 1988, she never gave up working with young artists (for The Long Way, 1989, painter and graphic artist Andreas Dress created the backgrounds and characters). Many of the artists who worked with or under Marion Rasche became known names in the international art scene.
The virtual film series is accompanied by the publication of the essay “For Marion,” by Lutz Dammbeck, multimedia artist and collaborator of Marion Rasche.
Enjoy watching the films!
August 4:
David and Goliath
GDR, 1981, dir. Sabine Meienreis, 6 min, color, cutout animation, no dialogue
August 7:
Einmart
GDR, 1981, dir. Lutz Dammbeck, 15 min, color, animation, English subtitles
August 11:
Fridolin, the Butterfly
GDR, 1982, dirs. Helge Leiberg, Alexander Reimann, 11 min, color, cutout animation, no dialogue
August 14:
And Everything Because of Love
GDR, 1982, dir. César Olhagaray, 6 min, color, animation, English subtitles
August 18:
Idyllic Landscape
GDR, 1985, dir. Alexander Reimann, 5 min, color, cutout animation, English subtitles
August 21:
Racetrack
GDR, 1982–84, dir. Gudrun Trendafilov, 5 min, color, animation, no dialogue
August 25:
The Black Spot
GDR, 1983–2021, dir. Sabine Meienreis, 4 min, color, animation, English subtitles
August 28:
The Flood
GDR, 1986, dir. Lutz Dammbeck, 10 min, color, animation, no dialogue
September 1:
Timelines
GDR, 1989, dir. Ulrich Lindner, 9 min, b&w, animation combination, no dialogue
September 4:
The Long Way
GDR, 1989, dir. Marion Rasche, 11 min, color/b&w, cutout animation, no dialogue
Curator, Texts, and Design: Hiltrud Schulz (Production & Outreach Manager)
Subtitles: Ruben Schwaben (Program Assistant)
Translation of “For Marion”: Benedikta Seitz (Intern)
Supported by the DEFA-Stiftung, Deutsches Haus at NYU, German Film Office, DIAF Dresden, Goethe-Institute Boston, Gegenüber, and the DEFA Film Library at UMass Amherst.