DEFA Film Library turns 25!

25 Screenings for 25% Off

We’d like to celebrate our 25th anniversary with you! Please join us! The first 25 people to contact us about screening one of our films at their cinema, cultural institution, university or college in 2018 will get 25% off our regular screening fee!

The DEFA Film Library at UMass Amherst was set up by Barton Byg, professor of film and German Studies at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. His idea was to make films from the East German DEFA Studios more available and known in North America and to broaden popular and scholarly understanding of filmmaking in the GDR by critically exploring its aesthetic, political and ideological bases. The signing of a UMass memorandum on September 23, 1993 marks the DEFA Film Library’s official founding.

Since then, our activities have grown a great deal! Meanwhile, in addition to making East German films available in different formats, we’ve continued to build our research profile, hosting international conferences and Summer Film Institutes and inviting DEFA filmmakers to tour educational and cultural institutions with their films. Our work has contributed to a significant expansion of English-language scholarship on DEFA cinema and the development of a vibrant international network of researchers and teachers. 

Please select your rental film from our extensive collection of DVDs, Blurays, DCPs and 35mm prints! For more information, please contact Joseph Keady:     filmtour@german.umass.edu.

WHO HAS SIGNED UP SO FAR?

1. Amherst Cinema, Amherst, MA: Stars

2. Goethe Institut Montreal: Apaches

3. NY Sephardi Film Festival: Stars

4. KINOFEST Seattle: Hot Summer

5. University of Cincinnati: Die alte neue Welt

6. Portland German Film Fest: Coming Out

7. Heights Theater, Col. Hts., MN: Hot Summer

8. Anthology Archive: Moor & Ravens of London

9.

10.

11.

12.

13.

14.

15.

16.

17.

18.

19.

20.

21.

22.

23.

24.

25.