The DEFA Film Library Participates in First Ever Black Quaker Lives Matter Film Festival

The DEFA Film Library documentary, Paul Robeson: “I’m a Negro, I am an American,” will close out the Black Quaker Lives Matter film festival on Saturday, April 9, which is also Robeson’s birthday. The festival, which began on Feb.12, is hosting a hybrid (live and virtual) screening of the film, with the live portion taking place at Coolidge Corner Theatre in Brookline, Massachusetts.

Image

The screening honors Paul Robeson (1898-1976) and 200 years of his Quaker ancestors, the Bustill-Mapps-Douglass family of Philadelphia.

The screening will be followed by a discussion between Joyce Mosley, researcher and descendent of the Bustill-Mapps-Douglass family; Mark Solomon, eminent historian and authority on African Americans and the Left; and Harold D. Weaver, Robeson advocate-researcher for over 50 years.

Registration is now open for the event.

The DEFA-Stiftung, a partner foundation in Berlin, is currently working on the digitization of the documentary. A restored version of the film with revised English subtitles on DVD and educational streaming is planned for release on DVD in 2023. DEFA Film Library's Program Assistant Kevina King worked on the English subtitles for the Paul Robeson film.

The DEFA Film Library is part of UMass Amherst and was founded in 1993 by Professor Barton Byg.  The DEFA Film Library, which is also a research center and an archive, is a unique public-private partnership. Both as a center for East German cinema, and as a model for film distribution and research, it is the only organization of its kind in the world. As such, it has drawn much national and international attention to UMass Amherst over the years. The DEFA Film Library presents the whole body of films (approx. 10,000 feature films, documentaries, animation films and newsreels) that were produced by the East German DEFA Studios from 1946 to 1992. The group has access to these films with the help of a Berlin-based foundation and other German partners and make our films available for research in North America. They also release films on DVD and for world-wide educational streaming on Kanopy.