Film
Two short films, Revolution of a Culture and Intellect and Power will be screened.
June 19, 2018
2:00 pm-4:30 pm
Integrative Learning Center, S240
The first German feature film to address the persecution of Jews in Nazi Germany—only two years after WWII. Based on the real fate of an acclaimed German theater couple.
June 19, 2018
7:00 pm-9:30 pm
Amherst Cinema
This film presents the question of whether the postwar period would be marked by cultural continuity or a radical break with the past. Mozart’s work serves as the basis for this first GDR opera film, but the screenplay diverges from the original libretto.
June 20, 2018
7:00 pm-9:30 pm
Isenberg School of Management, 137
Five short portraits reveal the heritage of GDR artists.
June 21, 2018
2:00 pm-4:30 pm
Integrative Learning Center, S240
Two young actors make their way through the cultural maze of divided Berlin before the Wall. This film provides a good visual reference point for understanding socialist realism.
June 21, 2018
7:00 pm-9:00 pm
Isenberg School of Management, 137
Two films demonstrate uses of the arts to establish historical narratives. Introduction by Sky Arndt-Briggs, UMass Amherst and April Eisman, Iowa State University
June 22, 2018
2:00 pm-4:30 pm
Isenberg School of Management, 137
Two films on political song, introduced by Johanna Yunker.
June 25, 2018
2:00 pm-4:30 pm
Integrative Learning Center, S240
This documentary about Friendship House, one of East Germany’s most successful “culture houses,” explores the GDR’s national experiment in bringing the arts to workers and encouraging workers to make art themselves. Features historic footage and interviews with participants and the architects of cultural policy.
June 25, 2018
7:00 pm-9:00 pm
Isenberg School of Management, 137
Films on Johann Sebastian Bach and Ludwig van Beethoven, two key composers of the German canon.
June 26, 2018
2:00 pm-4:30 pm
Integrative Learning Center, S240
An entertaining romantic comedy whose score ranges from classical references to the most up-to-date musical styles of the early 1960s. This last film of Slatan Dudow—who worked with Bertolt Brecht and Hanns Eisler on the 1932 communist classic Kuhle Wampe—ran into trouble due to its stylized vision and depictions of nudity and consumerism.
June 27, 2018
7:00 pm-9:30 pm
Isenberg School of Management, 137