DEFA Film Library, Amherst, MA (2026)

06/22/2026

🎬STREAM ON GOETHE ON DEMAND

The worldwide Goethe-Institut streaming platform, Goethe on Demand, invites you to watch five [East] German classics. Each of the films represents one decade during DEFA’s active film production era (1946–1992).

Don’t miss this special opportunity to explore some of Germany’s most celebrated cinema.

COMING OUT (1989, dir. Heiner Carow)

Goethe on Demand announcement: “The film features many historic pieces of q***r East Berlin, such as the gay bars Schoppenstube und Zum Burgfrieden in Prenzlauer Berg, and a cameo by Charlotte von Mahlsdorf, a well-known trans activist. Heiner Carow’s brave and bold film premiered on November 9, 1989, the night the Berlin Wall fell, and is the only film produced by the East German film studio DEFA to explicitly deal with homosexuality.”

06/20/2026

We remember Dieter Mann—a performer who shaped German theater and film during his career spanning five decades—who would have turned 85 today.

Mann began his successful acting career on the Deutsches Theater stage before making his screen debut in BERLIN AROUND THE CORNER (1966, dir. Gerhard Klein). Playing a rebellious young worker with a sharp tongue, a leather jacket, and a passion for motorcycles, Mann brought youthful defiance to the screen—so convincingly that the film was banned and locked away until 1987. Decades later, the Berlin International Film Festival celebrated the film for its “unconventional beauty.”

Dieter Mann, who was known for his sensitive, serious, and precise acting style, played in over 150 television and cinema productions and showed his versatile talent being at home in all genres from children’s to historic and contemporary films. Mann worked with acclaimed film directors, including Oliver Hirschbiegel (THE DOWNFALL, nominated for the Academy Award’s Best International Film), Margarethe von Trotta (THE PROMISE), Konrad Wolf (I WAS NINETEEN), and Egon Günther (LOTTE IN WEIMAR).

Der Spiegel wrote after the actor’s passing in 2022: “Dieter Mann was an outstanding, serious, and demanding Berlin actor, yet he was a favorite with the public.”

Photo: Dieter Mann in BERLIN UM DIE ECKE

06/19/2026

[6/6] The Mystique of Lutz Dammbeck

FILME von J. Böttcher und Lutz Dammbeck | 100 x 68.5 cm | offset lithography and screen print | 1983 | DEFA Film Library’s poster collection: GDR Avantgarde 1976–86

Lutz Dammbeck’s poster describes a joint film screening event with fellow filmmaker Jürgen Böttcher’s works on October 23, 1983. The film screening took place at Filmtheater Prager Straße Studiokino.

The Studiokino was an intimate setting, seating only about 50, used to screen independent arthouse films. The presented 1981 films were Böttcher’s POTTER’S BULL, VENUS BY GIORGIONE and WOMAN AT THE KLAVICHORD, and Dammbeck’s EINMART and HOMAGE TO LA SARRAZ.

As the artist shared with us, the baby in the poster is actually Dammbeck himself “in [his] younger years as taken from the family album!” The practice of Übermalen (painting over) is apparent in the poster, with streaks and blotches of black, matte paint decorating the picture. This is a hint for the films the poster advertises, as both Böttcher and Dammbeck employ this technique, where they take an existing piece of artwork––in Böttcher’s case, postcards of a famous painting, in Dammbek’s case developed film material––and add on their own touch.

To watch these five films, see Jürgen Böttcher’s DVD ART/WORK – Six Shorts or the playlist on and Lutz Dammbeck’s Against the Mainstream: Dammbeck’s Animated Works and HOMAGE TO LA SARRAZ on , or also available on our DVD Art Unleashed. Or get in touch with us!

06/18/2026

WATCH ALL OF DIRECTOR LUTZ DAMMBECK’S FILMS ON KANOPY!

For the last few weeks, we have been introducing multimedia artist Lutz Dammbeck’s posters to you. Now it’s time to watch his collection of animations, documentaries, and multimedia collages. You can stream Dammbeck’s entire oeuvre, including 19 films, on Kanopy.

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You can also rent and license these films from us for screenings, or purchase the 2-set DVD Art Unleashed: Experiments on Film by Lutz Dammbeck, including five of Dammbeck’s works and extensive bonus materials from our e-store.

06/16/2026

[5/6] The Mystique of Lutz Dammbeck

Spielfußballspiel | 82 x 60 cm | screen print | 1982 | DEFA Film Library’s poster collection: GDR Avantgarde 1976–86

The Clara Mosch Gallery put on yearly celebrations called the Moschball. This poster, created on the occasion of the gallery’s 5th birthday, advertises the get-together, but this time with a twist: There will be “Kein Moschball” (“No Moschball”). Designed like the East German prime time aktuelle camera news featuring newscaster Klaus Feldmann, the poster instead announces “Spielfußballspiel,” a play on words to the effect of “play soccer game.” Soccer matches were typically part of the festivities of the Moschball, and this year, the announced teams were the Clara Mosch Gallery members versus “Fünftracht A,” which was a play on the common team’s name “Eintracht.” This poster is a prime example of Dammbeck’s art styles, at times whimsical and creatively unburdened, with an atmosphere of mystery as well.

For this poster, Dammbeck used the screen-printing technique: The motifs were each exposed onto film and then transferred onto the screen. Dammbeck quoted the original poster for the opening of the Clara Mosch Gallery and combined it with a photograph taken of a TV monitor showing the newsreader from GDR television.

The print runs of Dammbeck’s posters varied––he says anywhere from 50 to 200 copies could have been made, with variants in color and motifs among them. This poster is an example of Dammbeck adding onto a previous poster, employing the Übermalen (painting over) technique to add the white handwriting onto one of the print copies. In that way, the copy becomes an original.

To learn more about the Clara Mosch Gallery, watch the documentary CLAIMING SPACE: EAST GERMANY’S INDEPENDENT ART EXHIBITION SCENE (2009, dir. Claus Löser), available on or through us and GO CLARA GO (2026, dir. Sylvie Kürsten) released by the distribution and production company Salzgeber.

06/15/2026

🎬STREAM ON GOETHE ON DEMAND

The worldwide Goethe-Institut streaming platform, Goethe on Demand, invites you to watch five [East] German classics. Each of the films represents one decade during DEFA’s active film production era (1946–1992).

Don’t miss this special opportunity to explore some of Germany’s most celebrated cinema.

JACOB THE LIAR (1974, dir. Frank Beyer)

Goethe on Demand announcement: “JACOB THE LIAR draws on author and scriptwriter Jurek Becker’s own experiences. As a child, Becker survived the Łódź ghetto and later Sachsenhausen concentration camp. He submitted the initial concept for the film to DEFA in 1963, but it was initially ignored. Only the success of the novel that later emerged from the idea led to the screen adaptation – one of DEFA’s most powerful films about humanity, courage and the fragile power of hope.”

06/12/2026

[4/6] The Mystique of Lutz Dammbeck

EINMART | 80 x 58 cm | offset lithography with screen print | 1981 | DEFA Film Library’s poster collection: GDR Avantgarde 1976–86

In this unsettling and visually striking poster, we see the main figure of Lutz Dammbeck’s short animation film, EINMART (1981). A disembodied head with short arms where the ears should be, this ‘mutant’ lives among others of its kind on a fantastical, sealed planet. The Dominator, a massive, sinister birdman, roams the land, an oppressive and inescapable force in the film’s environment.

The film is a mythical, otherworldly journey where Dammbeck weaves a masterfully rich visual tale, a surreal and indelible masterpiece of animation and storytelling. The film was controversial and was even silently acknowledged to be analogous to the surveillance apparatus of East Germany.

The poster echoes the dark and sinister atmosphere of the preternatural film setting, and upon closer inspection, we see the hatching lines that shade in the character, creating depth and texture, which reflect the deeply beautiful animation work Dammbeck employed in the film itself.

EINMART is available to stream on as part of the collection AGAINST THE MAINSTREAM: LUTZ DAMMBECK’S ANIMATED WORKS or can be rented from us.

06/11/2026

🎬STREAM ON GOETHE ON DEMAND

The worldwide Goethe-Institut streaming platform, Goethe on Demand, invites you to watch five [East] German classics. Each of the films represents one decade during DEFA’s active film production era (1946–1992).

Don’t miss this special opportunity to explore some of Germany’s most celebrated cinema.

BORN IN 45 (1966, dir. Jürgen Böttcher)

Goethe on Demand announcement: “Following the 11th Plenum of the SED Central Committee, BORN IN 45 was banned in its rough cut and completed only after the fall of the Berlin Wall, premiering in 1990 at the Academy of Arts and at the Berlin International Film Festival. From today’s perspective, the ban is surprising, since the film contains no overt criticism of the system. More striking is the film’s aesthetic style: shot entirely on location in East Berlin and inspired by Italian neorealism and the Czech New Wave. The authorities took a particular disliking to the portrayal of young men like Al, who drift aimlessly through life rather than conform to the ideal of the hard-working GDR youth.”

06/09/2026

[3/6] The Mystique of Lutz Dammbeck

Clara Mosch Galerie | 57.5 x 81.5 cm | special edition, original screen print on brown packaging paper | 1977 | DEFA Film Library’s poster collection: GDR Avantgarde 1976–86

Lutz Dammbeck created this poster to advertise the opening of the Clara Mosch Gallery in Karl-Marx-Stadt (today: Chemnitz) in East Germany on May 30, 1977. Clara Mosch was an artistic group consisting of visual artists Carlfriedrich Claus, Thomas Ranft, Michael Morgner, Dagmar Ranft-Schinke, and Gregor-Torsten Schade. They came up with the name by creating an acronym of their last names: CLA+RA+MO+SCH.

The group was an influential presence in the East German alternative art scene, and operated from 1977 to 1982, during which they offered spaces for artistic expression unsanctioned by the state. They were not part of the GDR state artists’ union, and so were truly an independent band of artists. The union operated exhibitions and income, so doing independent work was a risk.

The Clara Mosch Gallery was an informal space where the members could exhibit their work, often experimental and trailblazing (paintings, printmaking, graphic art, and the like), but the space was offered to other artists as well. In 1982, due to growing pressure from the GDR state, the group dissolved. Today, the Clara Mosch group is recognized as an exemplar of independent art in East Germany.

The veiled woman in the poster comes from a photograph that Dammbeck and his wife took of a marble bust “In Memory of Haubold Ludwig Wergen” by the sculptor Adam Friedrich Oeser (Grassi Museum in Leipzig). Dammbeck says the motif felt fitting to him as the subject for the newly founded gallery in Karl-Marx-Stadt, in his words, “mysterious, romantic, sphinx-like.” With the woman in the veil as the passport photo, the poster was intentionally designed to look like a standard GDR identity card.

Explore more of Clara Mosch Gallery’s story in the documentary CLAIMING SPACE: EAST GERMANY’S INDEPENDENT ART EXHIBITION SCENE (2009) available on or through us.

06/08/2026

🎬STREAM ON GOETHE ON DEMAND

The worldwide Goethe-Institut streaming platform, Goethe on Demand, invites you to watch five [East] German classics. Each of the films represents one decade during DEFA’s active film production era (1946–1992).

Don’t miss this special opportunity to explore some of Germany’s most celebrated cinema.

BERLIN–SCHÖNHAUSER CORNER (1957, dir. Gerhard Klein)

Goethe on Demand announcement: “This is one of DEFA’s most remarkable films of the 1950s, Gerhard Klein’s if openly inspired by neorealism. Shot entirely on the streets of Berlin rather than in a studio, it features naturalistic dialogue, a documentary-style camera and authentic music – a highly unusual approach for DEFA at the time. While the film largely conforms to the state approved political canon, relying on familiar East-West narratives, it pushes boundaries like no other DEFA film of its era. It portrays young people who resist the official youth programs, listen to Western music and model their clothes and gestures on pop culture. “Why can’t I live the way I want to?” one of them asks – a nuanced depiction of youth rarely seen in the GDR.”

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