Starting in September 2023, newly digitized films that deal with Chilean experience, are available to rent as HD 264 | mp4 files with English and Spanish subtitles. 

This program features three women filmmakers—Helke Misselwitz, Gitta Nickel and Petra Tschörtner—at the East German DEFA Studio for Documentary Films. The three selections are films made by women about women’s experiences in the GDR in the 1970s-80s, thereby offering candid views on issues that affected everyday life.

Wagenstein100 marks the 100th birthday of Bulgarian-Jewish screenwriter, novelist and lifelong revolutionary Angel Wagenstein, who wrote over fifty film scripts for Bulgarian, Czech and East German film studios and directed almost 30 historical documentaries for Bulgarian television.

Free virtual Summer Film Festival: 20 full-length and short films | 3 live Zoom events with the directors | 7 video introductions.

Stream 17 films and more: 6 feature films, 7 documentaries, 4 animation films... AND 3 Director's Talks and 6 video introductions!

This first-ever US retrospective of the early films of Helke Misselwitz gathers nine films made by the acclaimed documentary filmmaker in (East) Germany from 1983 to 1992.

Premiering in the USA and Argentina in November 2021!

THANK YOU for attending our virtual film festival showcasing films by and discussions with Black German filmmakers, actors, scholars and activists! Recordings of all five events are now available in our FILMBOX Digital Teaching Archive.

The 2020 ASEEES convention will screen the 1989 Kurt Tetzlaff documentary Paul Robeson: I'm a Negro, I'm an American on Nov. 8. Special guest Dr. Harold Weaver will join us for the ensuing Q&A and discussion.

The DEFA Film Library is very pleased to premiere the complete cinematic oeuvre of German filmmaker and media artist Lutz Dammbeck in North America. ART & Power: Lutz Dammbeck, a retrospective that includes 21 short and full-length films made from 1975 to 2018, gives audiences the opportunity to discover one of Germany’s most innovative contemporary artists, whose work intertwines film and art in bold and unexpected ways.  

In 1517, the Reformation began when Martin Luther published his 95 Theses; further radicalized by Thomas Müntzer, the serfs rose up against injustices in the German Peasants’ War. Seen as pre-communist antecedents of the GDR, these events inspired 14 DEFA films.

This retrospective of DEFA masterworks screened in tandem with a Georg Baselitz exhibition, entitled The Heroes. It is exciting that these films were shown in the home of Italian Neorealism, which exerted such a huge influence on GDR feature film directors!

Two US Premieres! In collaboration with Claudia Sandberg (Univ. of Melbourne), the DEFA Film Library and German & Scandinavian Studies at UMass Amherst will present a program on Chilean Memories & GDR Film at the 2017 GSA conference in Atlanta, Georgia.

In the 1970s and ‘80s, the DEFA Studios made a wide range of films focusing on the social and political situation in Pinochet’s Chile, as Chilean artists and intellectuals fleeing the regime settled in the GDR.

(East) German filmmaker Peter Kahane will visit the Five College area Oct 16–20, 2017. Over 25 years, Kahane's films have told remarkable stories about the lives of young people who confront the limitations set by society, family and daily life.

[East] German director Herrmann Zschoche’s films explore the lessons we learn in life. Often told through the experiences of young people or strong female protagonists, Zschoche made films in different genres to critically examine the heart of daily life.

We celebrate the 70th anniversary of DEFA’s founding with two short programs as part of ARTS NIGHT at this year’s GSA conference in San Diego! They take place on Thursday evening, September 29, in Royal Palm Salon 3 at the Town & Country Convention Center.

Please join us at the Goethe Zentrum Atlanta on April 1 for a reception and screening of Egon Günther's social satire When You're Older Dear Adam. Banned in 1966/Restored in 1990: restorers worked traces of the excisions and damage of censorship into the finished print.

This year features the North American premiere of the banned film Miss Butterfly, as well as four short films on German artists who suffered at the hands of the Nazis.

Three (East) German feature films offer cinematic snapshots of the life of Käthe Kollwitz (1867-1945), one of most important female artists of the 20th century, who worked as a painter, printmaker, sculptor, and was also involved in film.

While edits and changes in the face of possible censorship were not uncommon in the almost 50 years of the GDR’s film and television industry, censorship was not always equally imminent. The notorious highpoint was the Kahlschlag of 1965-66.

“The heroes of my most important films are people who want to break out.” Siegfried Kühn’s statement runs like a thread through his oeuvre, and his main characters—often women—take huge risks in their desire to transform their lives.

When the Berlin Wall fell, director Helke Misselwitz was screening her films at UMass Amherst. She returned in November, 2014, to commemorate this event 25 years later with three screenings and a gala reception!

In commemoration of 25 years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, the DEFA Film Library is pleased to present two films at the center of director Andreas Voigt's Leipzig series: Leipzig in the Fall and Last Year Titanic.

This year we invited conference participants to explore streaming our films. Our educational streaming partner Kanopy had agreed to make five of our new releases available for conference participants to preview for 12 days.

Reflecting both German and communist viewpoints, East German films treating the First World War emphasize different events and aspects of the period from what American viewers are familiar with.

Eight major award-winning films from the GDR in one series, including all the East German titles ever submitted for an Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film!

The tenth GSA Film Series, entitled From Ufa to DEFA, featured two classic films made in 1947, immediately after the end of WWII: Marriage in the Shadows and Wozzeck.

REEL WOMEN in East Germany is a collection of over sixty feature and documentary films that touch on the lives and work of women in the GDR.

One of very few women to succeed as a director at DEFA, Iris Gusner was among the first East German filmmakers to focus on the role and emancipation of women in the GDR.

The presentation of her film All My Girls by director Iris Gusner was the highlight of the ninth annual GSA Film Series.

Filmmaker and painter, Böttcher/Strawalde has turned eclectic events and materials into painterly films that are known for their striking visual style. This series features ten films on art, jazz, and Berlin.

Made in West/East Germany series premiered at the 2011 GSA conference, featuring a pair of films "women's films" made in the 1970s: The All-Round Reduced Personality (FRG, 1977, dir. Helke Sander) and The Dove on the Roof (GDR/Germany, 1973/2010, dir. Iris Gusner).

Director Jörg Foth, an insightful analyst of German society and film history, was the featured guest of a North American Filmmaker's Tour.

A guest appearance by filmmaker Jörg Foth—serendipitously joined by theater artist and author Steffen Mensching—was the highlight of this year's GSA Film Series.

The Made in West|East Germany film series draws on East German films from the DEFA Film Library and West German films from the Goethe-Institut Boston, to explore the interconnections and differences that existed between East and West Germany.

A guest appearance by director Andreas Dresen and selections from the WENDE FLICKS series, which premiered in Los Angeles in spring 2009, were highlights of the sixth annual German Film Series.

9 feature and 4 documentary films made by the last generation of GDR filmmakers in the years surrounding the fall of the Wall and German unification. Organized in collaboration with The Wende Museum, L.A.

Director Rainer Simon visited 24 colleges, universities, and cultural institutions in the United States and Canada from September to November 2008.

The fifth annual GSA German Film Series featured four new releases and was supplemented by a special screening of the Weimar Republic classic Kuhle Wampe, or Who Owns the World.

In 2007 the DEFA Film Library sponsored a film series commemorating the 70th birthday of the late Jurek Becker, one of the most important (East) German authors of the twentieth century. 

The fourth GSA Film Series highlighted the early films of director Andreas Dresen, including: Silent Country, Train in the Distance, Far from Klein Wanzleben, The Rats Sleep at Night, and Shortcut to Istanbul.

The third annual GSA Film Series presented selected titles from the Rebels with a Cause series, which had premiered at the Museum of Modern Art in New York the year before. It also paid respects to actor Erwin Geschonneck, who turned 100 years old in 2006.

Presented by The Museum of Modern Art, Department of Film and Media, and the Goethe-Institut New York,  in collaboration with the DEFA Film Library at the University of Massachusetts Amherst

Oct. 7-23, 2005
The Museum of Modern Art, New York

Curators: Jytte Jensen (MoMA), Juliane Camfield (Goethe-Institut New York)

Organized by Hiltrud Schulz (DEFA Film Library)

Andreas Dresen, one of Germany’s most successful contemporary filmmakers, undertook a two-week tour of the northeastern United States in the fall of 2005. He screened his film Willenbrock in its US premiere at the Brattle Theater in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

The second annual German Film Series at the German Studies Association conference in Milwaukee had something for everyone.

In November 2004, screenwriter and director Wolfgang Kohlhaase visited four colleges and universities in the northeastern U.S. as part of a two-week tour.

In 2004, we tried screening films at the annual conference of the German Studies Association for the first time. Since then, the GSA Film Series has become a key piece of the conference, which many conference participants attend on the first evening of the conference each year.

The first retrospective representing the intertwined themes of German/Jewish relations, antifascism, anti-Semitism, and the Holocaust in GDR cinema.

In the fall of 2002, director Frank Beyer presented his work at 28 different North American universities, colleges and cultural institutions as part of a two-month-long tour.

The city of Berlin has had a history unlike any other that is told by 16 films produced in both parts of Germany.

In 1997 the DEFA Film Library hosted the first North American conference on the cinema of the GDR, held at Smith College in Northampton, MA, and attended by over 120 scholars from eight countries. 

With our film series, DEFA Doppelgänger, we highlight DEFA’s position within world’s cinema. 

This series highlights women’s contributions to DEFA. See how their work iintersects with cultural and national identification, gender, race and socialism, and the politics of representation.

Screened in tandem with the exhibition Made in Germany? Art and Identity in a Global Nation (September 13, 2024 – January 5, 2025) at Harvard’s Busch-Reisinger Museum, the virtual film series  CLAIMING SPACES: Art Interventions in East Germany offers insight into an art world that existed parallel to official East German art of the late 1970s and 1980s.