Three DEFA Film Library Documentaries by Acclaimed Filmmaker Helke Misselwitz to be Available on Streaming Service MUBI

The DEFA Film Library at UMass Amherst has licensed three documentaries by acclaimed (East) German filmmaker Helke Misselwitz, one of the most talented directors of her generation, to MUBI North America, a global curated film streaming platform.

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MUBI selected three of Misselwitz’s full-length documentaries that provide insight into her oeuvre of unsentimental portraits showing the complexity of human relationships before and after the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989.

“We are so excited that this MUBI release follows successful screenings at New York’s Anthology Film Archives, Mar del Plata Film Festival in Argentina and Play-Doc in Spain,” says Hiltrud Schulz, DEFA’s outreach and project manager. “Finally, Helke Misselwitz’s films get the deserved international attention.”

The three-part MUBI series begins June 20 with Misselwitz’s masterpiece, “Winter Adé,” a powerful look at the lives and failed dreams of women across East Germany. “Who’s Afraid of the Bogeyman,” coming to the service June 27, portrays a feisty woman who runs a small company that delivers heating coal in East Berlin’s Prenzlauer Berg district. The closing film, “Bulky Trash,” available July 11, spotlights a young East Berliner punk whose mother and sister move to West Berlin, yet he decides to stay and hopes to maintain his cultural identity even after the tumultuous events around the fall of the Berlin Wall and the subsequent unification of Germany in 1990.

DEFA Film Library’s first MUBI releases are generously supported by the German Film Office in New York.

More information about Mubi its film library and rates can be found at www.mubi.com.