DEFA Film Library Publishes Fifth in Series of Teaching Guides for Educators and Film Programmers
Content
The DEFA Film Library at UMass Amherst has published its fifth teaching guide, written by Skidmore College’s Juliane Wuensch for the 1966 East German film “Trace of Stones,” directed by Frank Beyer. The guide offers suggestions and resources for teaching activities and historical background on the film’s production, its subsequent ban and censorship, as well as information about the cast and crew.
DEFA Film Library’s Teaching Guide Series, which is supported by the DEFA Foundation in Berlin, helps teachers and film programmers incorporate East German films into their classes, film festivals and programs. The guides are written in English by experienced scholars and educators who develop comprehensive educational materials for selected DEFA films.
Two additional teaching guides are currently under contract. The 1985 feature film, “Blond Tango,” by Carla Steinbrecher of St. Andrews, U.K., about a Chilean refugee in 1970s East Germany and the 1989 documentary, “…And Fridays at the Green Hell,” by Oliver Knabe of the University of Dayton, about East Germany’s raucous soccer fandom youth subculture.
The teaching guides are in PDF format and are free to download. For more information and to download the Trace of Stones and four other available teaching guides, visit the DEFA Film Library website.