Black Lives in Germany

Film + Talk | October 22, 2020

AUDRE LORDE, MAY AYIM & THE BLACK GERMAN MOVEMENT (Event I)

• LIVE VIRTUAL DISCUSSION (10/22/20)

A webinar discussion with director Dagmar Schultz and author Ika Hügel-Marshall. Moderated by Sara Lennox and hosted by curator Kevina King (both UMass Amherst).

Watch the recording on FILMBOX, our Digital Teaching Archive.

Dagmar Schultz grew up in West Berlin, where she studied at the Free University before studying film, television and journalism at the Univ. of Michigan startin gin 1963. In 1974, she co-founded Orlanda Verlag in Berlin.

Ika Hügel-Marshall is an Afro-German activist and author of the autobiography Daheim unterwegs: Ein deutsches Leben (available as: Invisible Woman: Growing Up Black in Germany). It chronicles her experiences growing up and won the Audre Lorde Literary Award; she has presented it throughout Germany, Austria and the U.S.

Host Sara Lennox is Prof. Emerita of German Studies at UMass Amherst. Her books include Remapping Black Germany: New Perspectives on Afro-German History, Politics, and Culture (2016).

• FILMS

Audre Lorde – The Berlin Years 1984-1992

(Audre Lorde – Die Berliner Jahre 1984–1992, 2012, Germany, dir. Dagmar Schultz, script Ika Hügel-Marshall, ed. Aletta von Vietinghoff, 79 min., color, EN ST)

This award-winning documentary explores a little-known chapter in the life of the prolific African-American author Audre Lorde (1934-92), who lived in Berlin in the 1980s. Lorde, who described herself as "black, lesbian, mother, warrior, poet," helped ignite the Afro-German Movement and made lasting contribtuions to the German political and cultural scene before and after unification. Follow FaceBook about this film!

Soon to be available On Demand!

Hope In My Heart – The May Ayim Story

(Hoffnung im Herz. Mündliche Poesie - May Ayim, 1997, Germany, dir. Maria Binder, co-prod. Dagmar Schultz, 29 min. color EN ST)

A portrait of the Ghanaian-German poet, academic and political activist May Ayim (1960-95). One of the founders of the Black German Movement, Ayim became known in Germany and abroad for her political poetry and her research on the history and present situation of Afro-Germans. Strongly connected to other Black poets of the diaspora, she explored and expanded the genre of oral poetry / spoken word, confronting white German society with its prejudices.

Available On Demand!

• OTHER EVENTS

... in our Black Lives in Germany: Resilience, Art and Hope film festival, October 2020 - April 2021.

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FOR MORE INFORMATION

please email curator Kevina King

This event is made possible in part by the Consulate of the Federal Republic of Germany. Co-sponsors at UMass Amherst include Film Studies; German & Scandinavian Studies; Music & Dance; and Women, Gender & Sexuality Studies.