The DEFA Film Library’s virtual animation film festival, The Colorful World of Animation: A Short History, is available for free and is open to the UMass community and the public from July 11–Aug. 29, 2025. 

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The festival includes 15 short animations, some of them subtitled for the first time by the DEFA team and it commemorates the 70th anniversary of the DEFA Studio for Animation Films in Dresden. From 1955 to 1992, the studio created almost 1,000 short and full-length animation productions for children and adults and this body of films is part of the DEFA Film Library’s holdings. 

The 250 DEFA studio employees worked in all genres—from cartoons, silhouettes to puppet films. Their films covered countless topics—from environmental to current political issues, human behaviors or daily life stories. 

“We are very excited to present the first ever DEFA animation film retrospective in North America. Viewers will get a glimpse into the exciting history of the East German animation studio and this event will surely inspire more interest in these under-researched films,” said Hiltrud Schulz, Production & Outreach Manager of the DEFA Film Library. 

The festival is based on an essay by Ralf Schenk, German film historian and co-editor of the acclaimed anthology Die Trick-Fabrik (The Animation Factory, 2003). Throughout the summer, the DEFA Film Library will make the text about the studio’s history—including the filmmakers and their films, co-productions, international influences, and notable trends—available in 15 installments on social media. Each part will be combined with an animation film that can be streamed on the DEFA Film Library’s Vimeo platform. 

For more information and the streaming link, visit umass.edu/defa.

The virtual festival is supported by the German Film Office in New York, the DEFA Foundation and DEFA Distribution GmbH in Berlin, the German Institute for Animation Film in Dresden, the Goethe-Institut in Boston and Chicago, and the DEFA Film Library at UMass Amherst.