UMass Amherst’s DEFA Film Library Announces New Academic Director

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AMHERST, Mass.— The College of Humanities and Fine Arts extends a warm welcome to Mariana Ivanova, the new academic director of the DEFA Film Library. As a scholar of East German cinema, she brings a wealth of experience to continue the legacy of founding director Barton Byg and to lead new global initiatives and collaborations. Based in the German and Scandinavian Studies Program in the department of languages, literatures, and cultures, the DEFA Film Library is the only research center worldwide devoted to a broad spectrum of filmmaking from and related to the former German Democratic Republic. Since its founding in 1993, it has become internationally known for its innovative approaches to scholarship and programming.

Mariana Ivanova comes to UMass Amherst from Miami University in Ohio, where she has been on the faculty of the German program and also affiliated with Film Studies, Jewish Studies, European studies and the Havighurst Center for Russian and Post-Soviet studies. With extensive studies in German literature and cinema, she holds degrees from the University of Texas at Austin (Ph.D.), the University of Pittsburgh (M.A.) and the University of Shumen in Bulgaria (B.A.). Her monograph Cinema of Collaboration: DEFA Coproductions and International Exchange in Cold War Europe recently appeared with Berghahn Books, complementing a series of articles on East German cinema as well as filmed interviews with famed Bulgarian author and screenwriter Angel Wagenstein and actress Tatiana Lolova.

Ivanova will be on campus as of Jan. 2020 and will join the UMass Amherst faculty as an associate professor in the German and Scandinavian studies program. At the DEFA Film Library, she will work with executive director Skyler Arndt-Briggs and Production and Outreach Manager Hiltrud Schulz, as well as a talented group of student employees. As academic director, Ivanova will focus on projects that develop and foster new directions in research on East German cinema in a global context. She has already begun work on the DEFA Film Library’s upcoming tenth biennial Summer Film Institute, which she will co-direct with Seth Howes (University of Missouri) and which will focus on Authority and Alterity in East German Movies: Political Experiments, Rebel Youth and Civil Unrest. Ivanova is also particularly interested in the role played by archives and will continue to develop the DEFA Film Library’s archival holdings in collaboration with SCUA at UMass’s W.E.B. Du Bois Library.

The DEFA Film Library at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, founded by professor Barton Byg in 1993, is the only archive and research center outside of Germany devoted to a broad spectrum of filmmaking from and related to the former GDR. It houses an extensive collection of 35- and 16mm prints, DVDs, books, periodicals and articles. Students are involved in all aspects of the Library’s research, outreach and teaching activities and also gain valuable experience in subtitling and library, conference and arts management.