Filmmaker's Series
© DEFA Stiftung
Sponsors:
These events are kindly supported by:
- the DEFA Foundation;
- the German Information Center USA;
- the German Embassy.
At UMass Amherst:
- College of Humanities and Fine Arts;
- Department of Languages,
- Literatures & Cultures;
- German and Scandinavian Studies (LLC);
- Department of History;
- DEFA Film Library;
- Fine Arts Center;
- UMass Print Services.
From the Five Colleges:
- Smith College German Department;
- Amherst College Department of German;
- Hampshire College of Humanities, Arts and Cultural Studies;
- the Department of German Studies at Mount Holyoke College.
Andreas Voigt's Leipzig Films
Premiere 2014
University of Massachusetts Amherst
On Monday, October 16, 1989, filmmakers Andreas Voigt and Gerd Kroske took their cameras to Leipzig to document the demonstrations happening there that were coinciding with East Germany's 40th anniversary events. Though the filmmakers did not have any plan at that point to shoot a film, they understood the urgency of capturing the events on film. This footage, however, was the start of director Voigt's Leipzig Films that document, from the ground up, the time shortly before, during, and immediately after the fall of the Berlin Wall and German reunification.
In commemoration of these events 25 years later, the DEFA Film Library is happy to present these two films at the center of director Voigt's Leipzig series: Leipzig in the Fall and Last Year Titanic. The DEFA Film Library brought Leipzig in the Fall out in 2009 with English subtitles as part of its WENDE FLICKS: Last Films from East Germany series, and we are pleased to bring Last Year Titanic to English-speaking audiences this year, which is an interesting revisiting of the events the filmmakers present in Leipzig in the Fall.
The two films, when seen together, provide a comprehensive understanding of the emotional, psychological and concrete experiences of the reunification process as it was experienced by people from all levels of society.
Currently, director Voigt is working on part six of the series.