
35 Years Fall of the Berlin Wall
Screening: Locked-Up Time
In celebration of the 35th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, the DEFA Film Library invites the UMass community to a special screening of the documentary Locked-Up Time (1990, dir. Sibylle Schönemann) at UMass ILC S350 on November 7 at 6:30 pm. Mariana Ivanova (Academic Director, DEFA Film Library) will introduce the film and be available for Q&A.
After filmmaker Sibylle Schönemann applied to leave East Germany for West Germany in 1984, she was arrested by the Stasi (the East German secret police) and imprisoned for the “crime” of “interfering with state activities.” A few months after the fall of the Wall, she returns to East Germany and confronts the people responsible for her arrest and imprisonment, including fellow workers, prison guards and Stasi members. Not all of them are willing to talk. The New York Times called the deeply personal journey of the filmmaker into her past traumas “exquisite.”
"Extraordinary [...] this deft and chilling film has the style of a personal excursion into history." —The New York Times
The film will also be screened at three other universities: University of Connecticut, University of Wisconsin-Madison and University of Tennessee. And the DEFA Film Library invited director Sibylle Schönemann for virtual talks with students and faculty at these three places.
Our UMass community can stream a 30-minute video interview with the director that the DEFA Film Library produced last summer.
The documentary will be released on kanopy.com and will also be available through us for rental, DSL and streaming. A teaching guide written by Maria Stehle (University of Tennessee) will be available in fall 2024.