Thematic Series

Design: DEFA Film Library | Photo: Lutz Dammbeck

Sponsors:

Curated and organized by Hiltrud Schulz and the DEFA Film Library Team. | Technical Support: Margaret Nguru, DEFA Film Library.

Special thanks to filmmaker and media artist Lutz Dammbeck and film historian Claus Löser for their curatorial advice and to all filmmakers and artists who created these films

The film series is supported by the Richard L. Menschel Endowment Funds for the Harvard Art Museums and the DEFA Film Library at the University of Massachusetts Amherst.

CLAIMING SPACES: Art Interventions in East Germany

virtual film series

22 films by/about artists

November 15 – 24, 2024

Presented by the DEFA Film Library at UMass Amherst and the Harvard Art Museums

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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. East Germany’s artistic heritage continues to shape the heterogeneity of German cultural identities, as well as the memory discourse that defines the German art scene today. Through novel and experimental means, these films provide important political and cultural context for the periods before and after the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989.

By or about artists, these 22 films also highlight East German creatives who were not endorsed by state-supported art initiatives. They claimed their own spaces, including private galleries, homes, and venues where they were able to exhibit art and conduct multimedia performances. The artists took different approaches to their work: they experimented with various formats, crossed genres, explored new media such as Super-8 film, and partnered with organizations like the DEFA Studio for Animation Films. Especially the animations by Chilean artists in political exile demonstrate cross-cultural experiments. Overall, these films represent diverse artistic interventions, and provide examples of East German collaborative filmmaking that raise complex questions about identity and cultural heritage today.

Ultimately, many artists featured in this series felt restricted in East Germany. After testing all available possibilities and imposed limits, they decided to cross the border to West Germany, where they became part of a “free” but competitive art market with its own challenges.

Claiming Spaces

First Leipzig Autumn Salon (1984, dir. Lutz Dammbeck, 22 min., doc.)

REALFilm (1986, dir. Lutz Dammbeck, 48 min., media collage)

La Villette (1990, dir. Gerd Kroske, 53 min., doc.)

Claiming Space – East Germany’s Independent Art Exhibition Scene (2009, dir. Claus Löser, 100 min., doc.)

Filmic Experiments

Lautaro (1977, dir. Juan Forch, 18 min., animation)

Rosaura (1978, dir. Lothar Barke, 6 min., animation)

Metamorphoses I (1978-79, dir. Lutz Dammbeck, 7 min., media collage)

Homage to La Sarraz (1981, dir. Lutz Dammbeck, 12 min., media collage)

Transformations I-III (1981, dir. Jürgen Böttcher, 54 min., media collage)

Einmart (1981, dir. Lutz Dammbeck, 15 min., animation)