CENES Faculty Dr. Kyle Frackman is co-directing the eighth biennial East German Summer Film Institute, hosted by the DEFA Film Library at the University of Massachusetts Amherst in July 2015.
Thirty-six international scholars will participate in the eighth biennial Summer Film Institute organized by the University of Massachusetts Amherst’s DEFA Film Library and being held July 19-26 at Smith College. This year’s topic is “Sex, Gender & Videotape: Love, Eroticism & Romance in East Germany.”
Public events associated with the institute include a film festival that includes several North American premieres and a keynote lecture, “From Private Snapshots to Coming Out: The Queering of East German Visual Culture,” by historian Josie McLellan of the University of Bristol in the U.K. on Sunday, July 19 at 4 p.m. in 201 Seelye Hall, Smith College.
The screenings begin July 19 at 7:15 p.m. in Weinstein Auditorium, Wright Hall, with “Our Short Life (Unser kurzes Leben),” which will be introduced by Skyler Arndt-Briggs, executive director of the DEFA Film Library. The 1980 film tells the story of a 26-year-old woman who moves to a small town for a fresh start after her divorce.
According to organizers of the institute, films have much to contribute to ongoing debates about gender and sexuality in East Germany, where, among other things, women were assumed to be equal and public nudity came to be widely accepted. Building on developments in feminist and queer theory, Summer Film Institute participants will examine cinematic representations of men and women, sex and intimacy, and individuality and collective identity—as these were shaped by and challenged East German social and cultural politics. Analysis of the stories and characters in a range of German Democratic Republic films reveals unexpected details and contradictions in East German society, policies and cultural norms.
Major sponsors of this year’s Summer Film Institute and public film series include the Max Kade Foundation; DEFA Foundation Berlin; DAAD/the German Academic Exchange Service; Goethe-Institut Boston; German Hygiene Museum Foundation in Dresden; DRA & RBB Archives Germany; the Department of Central, Eastern and Northern European studies at the University of British Columbia; The Wende Museum; Noahfilm Produktion, Berlin; the UMass Translation Center, and a range of other UMass Amherst and Five College sponsors.
http://www.umass.edu/newsoffice/article/defa-summer-film-institute-explores-%E2%80%98love
