Mariana Ivanova Presents Keynote at Symposium Marking 80th Anniversary of East German Film Studio DEFA

Content

Mariana Ivanova, academic director of the DEFA Film Library and associate professor of German film and media in the College of Humanities and Fine Arts, recently presented a keynote at the international symposium celebrating the 80th anniversary of the founding of the East German film studio DEFA. 

The symposium, held May 21-22 in Halle, Germany, was co-sponsored by the DEFA Foundation, the Friedrich Ebert Foundation and the State Agency for Civic Education of Saxony-Anhalt.

Ivanova’s keynote, “The DEFA Film Library Presents: DEFA Literary Adaptations at Museums and Universities in the USA,” focused on the crucial role literary adaptations played in recognizing DEFA as a cinema of prestige and avant-garde innovation in the U.S. and worldwide. While works by East German authors were taught at U.S. universities since the late 1960s, it was only through the DEFA Film Library that students, cineastes and researchers became aware of award-winning film adaptations, such as “The Divided Heaven,” “Jacob the Liar,” or “Mother Courage and Her Children.”

Ivanova further highlighted the DEFA Film Library’s groundbreaking work in distributing film adaptations to colleges, museums, and film festivals and co-organizing retrospectives at MoMA in New York, the Wende-Museum in Los Angeles, the Coolidge Corner Theater in Boston and Amherst Cinema, among others.

She also participated in a panel discussion on “Preservation and Care for the DEFA Film Heritage,” sharing the stage with Seán Allan of St. Andrews University in the U.K., Michael Wedel of Film University KONRAD WOLF in Germany, and Stefanie Eckert, head of the DEFA Foundation in Germany.