DEFA Film Library, Amherst, MA (2026)

09/04/2026

Today we release the last film of our 2026 virtual festival, COLLABORATION IN ANIMATION: MARION RASCHE AND HER EXPERIMENTING ARTISTS. We hope you have enjoyed the line-up. All ten films will still be available until September 6. Find the streaming link in our bio.

10|10 THE LONG WAY
OT: Der lange Weg | GDR, 1989, dir. Marion Rasche, 11 min, color/b&w, cutout animation, no dialog
Script and Animation: Marion Rasche

A seagull is injured during a dangerous storm and ends up in a forest, where she joins a family of woodpeckers. But she is rejected by the older family members. A young woodpecker falls in love with her and together they leave the forest and go to the sea, where the seagulls live. There the strange woodpecker is rejected. Now they are both looking for a place where they can happily live together.

The mainly black-and-white experimental images and characters were created by painter and graphic artist Andreas Dress, a graduate of the Dresden Academy of Fine Arts and member of the East German subversive Super 8 film scene. It was his only collaboration with DEFA.

09/03/2026

Close-Up: Lothar Warneke, the Documentary Fiction Film Director

We will devote this Close-Up to director Lothar Warneke, who would have turned 90 on Sept. 15 and focus on four of the director’s most important films that were awarded at prestigious international film festivals, including BEAR YE ONE ANOTHER’S BURDEN (1988 Silver Bear for Best Actors, Berlin International Film Festival) and APPREHENSION (nominated for the 1982 Golden Lion, Venice International Film Festival) and films that you can watch on Kanopy and stream or rent from us.

Warneke was introduced to film in his childhood when his father gifted him an ICA-Monopol camera. He wanted to become a minister and studied theology. Ultimately, he decided to break from this path and instead returned to his passion for film.

In the 1960s, Warneke studied at the German Film School in Potsdam-Babelsberg, and after his graduation, he worked as an assistant director for directors including Egon Günther and Kurt Maetzig before eventually making his own first film, DR. MED SOMMER II (1969). This film launched some key features that would go on to characterize Warneke’s work. He was highly influenced by Italian Neorealism and the idea that film could be more than entertainment and has the ability to reflect on real-life problems and thereby help viewers feel less alone in their struggles.

In his films, Warneke paints authentic and raw pictures of everyday life in documentary style. A frequent motif in his films is the clash that existed between the East German system, which was often characterized by monotony, restraints, and compromise, and his ideal-driven protagonists’ ambitions. Another remarkable feature of Warneke’s work is his focus on Othered protagonists, such as a Chilean emigrant in BLOND TANGO (1985) or emancipated female characters in APPREHENSION (1981), and OUR SHORT LIFE (1980).

Warneke counts as one of the most important DEFA-directors of the 1980s who made a striking impact on the genre of Alltagsfilm (everyday film). His unapologetically realistic depiction of life continues to be an indispensable record of history. —Benedikta Seitz, DEFA Film Library intern

09/01/2026

We continue our virtual festival, COLLABORATION IN ANIMATION: MARION RASCHE AND HER EXPERIMENTING ARTISTS with Ulrich Lindner’s TIMELINE. Our festival will run until September 6. We will at the last film to the line-up this Friday. You can still watch all the films until September 6. Find the streaming link in our bio.

The festival features ten films spotlighting Marion Rasche, the visionary chief dramaturg and artistic director of DEFA’s animation studio in Dresden. In the 1980s, she invites young freelance artists to create bold, imaginative shorts that transformed East German animation.

9|10 TIMELINES
OT: Zeitverläufe | GDR, 1989, dir. Ulrich Lindner, 9 min, b&w, animation combination, no dialog
Scenario and Dramaturg: Marion Rasche

A window opens onto a perfect summer meadow in full bloom, but before long, a dark shadow emerges. Images drift across the screen: boarded-up houses, a sinking lighthouse, an abandoned railway station, headless sculptures, desolate landscapes, a bird trapped in a cage, rolling glass balls reflecting the world upside down, a flying fish, parched earth. These magical, surreal scenes are repeatedly interrupted by a high-wire artist balancing diagonally through the image. As the movement becomes increasingly erratic and out of sync, it evokes the sense that life is often a precarious and dramatic balancing act. In the final image, only an empty wire remains.

Photographer and photographic artist Ulrich Lindner designed a devastating allegory of the environment’s destruction using collages of his photographs taken in unusual exposures, including solarization effects, or by applying photomechanical manipulations. Lindner’s film broke with all DEFA rules and animation techniques. The unsettling music, scored by Friedbert Wissmann, who is known for electronic sound generation, adds to the disturbing images.

08/31/2026

75 YEARS AGO TODAY!

Wolfgang Staudte’s historical satire THE KAISER’S LACKEY double-premiered at the East Berlin Babylon and the DEFA cinema at Kastanienallee 75 years ago today!

Director Falk Harnack (THE AXE OF WANDSBEK, 1951) and Austrian American director and actor Erich von Stroheim had originally been considered for the director’s chair. However, Staudte took over the project. Together with his dad, Fritz Staudte, who acted in a supporting role in the film, based their script on Heinrich Mann’s novel. Today, the film is considered a prototype of a literary adaptation that is, on the one hand, faithful to the source material but, on the other hand, also stands on its own.
The film is a biting critique of conservative Wilhelmine Germany and tells the story of Diederich Hessling, who learns an important lesson for an ambitious man: One must first serve power to gain power for oneself. From then on, his modus operandi is to bow to superiors and kick underlings.

THE KAISER’S LACKEY received high acclaim around the world, but in West Germany it was subject to film censorship. Officials regarded it as an attack on their country, which many saw as showing signs of reverting to a subject state. In 2014, “Der Spiegel” told the story of Erich Mehl, the West German producer who collaborated with DEFA and knew Staudte. He submitted the film three times to the censorship office until he finally received the film’s import permit in fall 1956. The film finally screened in West German theaters but in an edited, shorter version in 1957.
Staudte said about his film in the 1950s: “I want to show the willingness of certain people around 1900 that, spanning two world wars, led to Germany’s collapse in 1945. It is intended to be a continuation of my indictment of these circles and a warning against these people, just as I sought to express in THE MURDERERS ARE AMONG US.”

The film, reminiscent of works by Eisenstein and Pudowkin (Herbert Ihring, 1951), is ranked by film critics among the 100 Most Significant German Films of All Time and is part of many top film lists. Today, the political message of the film is more relevant than ever.

Photos: Shooting THE KAISER’S LACKEY

08/28/2026

We continue our virtual festival, COLLABORATION IN ANIMATION: MARION RASCHE AND HER EXPERIMENTING ARTISTS with Lutz Dammbeck’s THE FLOOD inspired by a Chinese fable. Our festival will run until September 6. Each Tuesday and Friday we add a new film to our line-up that you can stream for free via the link in DEFA Film Library’s bio.

The festival features ten films spotlighting Marion Rasche, the visionary chief dramaturg and artistic director of DEFA’s animation studio in Dresden. In the 1980s, she invites young freelance artists to create bold, imaginative shorts that transformed East German animation.

8|10 THE FLOOD
OT: Die Flut | GDR, 1986, dir. Lutz Dammbeck, 10 min, color, animation, no dialog
Dramaturg: Marion Rasche

Two men enjoy the sunset from their lonely island until they realize that a storm is moving in. They decide to build a boat so they can escape the severe weather. While one man is mindful of the coming danger and urges haste, the other wastes his time on decorative details.

A richly imaginative work with surreal imagery by media artist Lutz Dammbeck. THE FLOOD was the final film that the legendary director made for DEFA before leaving for West Germany. This short film takes inspiration from a Chinese fable and features music from internationally renowned jazz musician Günter “Baby” Sommer. THE FLOOD is a feast for the senses and thematically dense without the use of a single word.

08/26/2026

50 YEARS AGO TODAY!

Egon Günther’s THE SORROWS OF YOUNG WERTHER premiered 50 years ago today at the International cinema in East Berlin!

Egon Günther and Helga Schütz based their script on Goethe’s novel of the same title and told the story of young Werther, a nature-loving dreamer who cannot come to terms with the social conditions of his time. When he falls in love with Lotte, who is already betrothed to the dutiful Albert, a series of tragic events unfolds...

“Günther […] transposed the entire work into our present day—also marked by the music by Siegfried Matthus (alongside Mozart’s Violin Concerto in G Major). Katharina Thalbach, Hilmar Baumann, and Hans-Jürgen Wolf are not characters from Goethe’s legendary novel, but self-reflective, observant people of the 20th century who—in what one might call a Brechtian alienation effect—stand on the sidelines, maintaining a distance from the events.” (Pitt Herrmann, filmportal.de)

A year earlier, Egon Günther had already released LOTTE IN WEIMAR, a biopic about Charlotte Kestner, who returns after four decades to see Goethe again. She was the love of Goethe’s youth and inspired the character Lotte in Goethe’s renowned epistolary novel, The Sorrows of Young Werther, published in 1774.

Günther was fascinated by Goethe’s life and work and returned to the writer one more time with his film THE BRIDE (1999), focusing on Goethe’s longtime lover and later wife, the 23-year-old Christiane Vulpius.

Although THE SORROWS OF YOUNG WERTHER was well received by audiences and media, when lead actress Katharina Thalbach left for West Germany, it disappeared from the big screen.

Photo: Hans-Jürgen Wolf (Werther), Katharina Thalbach (Lotte), and Hilmar Baumann (Albert)

08/25/2026

We continue our virtual festival, COLLABORATION IN ANIMATION: MARION RASCHE AND HER EXPERIMENTING ARTISTS with the North American premiere of THE BLACK SPOT directed by Sabine Meienreis. Our festival will run until September 6. Each Tuesday and Friday we add a new film to our line-up that you can stream for free via the link in DEFA Film Library’s bio.

The festival features ten films spotlighting Marion Rasche, the visionary chief dramaturg and artistic director of DEFA’s animation studio in Dresden. In the 1980s, she invites young freelance artists to create bold, imaginative shorts that transformed East German animation.

7|10 THE BLACK SPOT
Der schwarze Fleck | GDR, 1983–2021, dir. Sabine Meienreis, 4 min, color, animation, English subtitles
Dramaturg: Marion Rasche

Two men create different tracks that merge at one point, and they cheerfully cycle along them. But the spaces they pass fill first with visible overlaying colorful spots until everything increasingly turns dark. A metaphoric reference to the destruction of landscapes by civilization.

Sabine Meienreis’s (David and Goliath) production of The Black Spot was stopped, and she was not allowed to add sound to the film due to her pending application for an exit visa to West Germany. The film material was considered lost. However, in 2021, a 35 mm dupe negative was found, and the director could finally finish her film.

Meienreis collaborated with graphic artist and illustrator Steffi Bluhm in this short. The two had already worked together on David and Goliath in 1981, in which Bluhm used a similar technique of overlaying geometric color shapes in combination with lines and graphic elements.

08/24/2026

Peter Rocha’s Lusatia Trilogy will open the 2026 Conference of the Association for German Studies in Great Britain and Ireland, “Environments,” at the Goethe-Institut Glasgow on August 26.

From 1987 to 1990, director Peter Rocha and his crew traveled through Lusatia, documenting the landscape and culture on the brink of disappearance. In the center of their trilogy is the Spreewald region—a unique maze of rivers and canals (designated UNESCO biosphere reserve since 1991)—and the culture of the Sorbian community, the only recognized ethnic minority living in the territory of the former East Germany.

Aerial photos show the scale of the devastation that the Sorbian writer Jurij Koch calls an “act of ethnocide.” Rocha also finds artists and activists, including landscape architect Otto Rindt and the excavator operator and singer-songwriter Gerhard Gundermann, an East German music icon, who try to fight for the preservation of nature with their own means. They openly share their concerns in front of the camera.

Rocha’s films became an act of protest, exposing the environmental destruction and cultural erasure of Sorbian culture in order to expand coal mining. Unsurprisingly, the films found little favor with East German officials.

08/22/2026

Happy 85th birthday to composer, musician, and music publisher Peter Gotthardt!

The title songs that Gotthardt composed for Heiner Carow’s cult film THE LEGEND OF PAUL AND PAULA (1972), “Go to Her” and “When You Live,” became hits in East Germany. They were played and sung by the Puhdys and paved the way to the band’s stellar success. Gotthardt was not even 30 years old when he scored these two songs which are among 500 (!) film melodies that he wrote for animations, documentaries, and feature films during his five-decade career in cinema and television.

Gotthardt and Carow also collaborated on the youth film ICARUS (1975), as well as on UNTIL DEATH DO US PART (1978), a film about marriage, parenting, work and gender identity in East Germany.
He also worked with director Herrmann Zschoche on some of his best-known youth and coming-of-age films, such as LOVE WITH 16 (1974), SEVEN FRECKLES (1978), and SWAN ISLAND (1982). In 1986, Gotthardt scored Ralf Kirsten’s artist biography, KÄTHE KOLLWITZ – IMAGES OF A LIFE. He is also credited to Frank Beyer’s THE CAPTAIN OF KÖPENICK (1997). One of his last film projects he worked on was HI**ER CANTATA (2005, dir. Jutta Brückner), for which he composed music in addition to compiling the soundscape of known songs and classic pieces.

In 2018, Peter Gotthardt was awarded the German Film Music Prize by the International Academy of Media and Arts and the German Film Composer Union.

Photo: Zeitzeugengespräch with Peter Gotthardt, 2021, Teubner

08/21/2026

We continue our virtual festival, COLLABORATION IN ANIMATION: MARION RASCHE AND HER EXPERIMENTING ARTISTS with the North American premiere of RACETRACK directed by Gudrun Trendafilov.

Our festival will run until September 6. Each Tuesday and Friday we add a new film to our line-up that you can stream for free via the link in DEFA Film Library’s bio.

The festival features ten films spotlighting Marion Rasche, the visionary chief dramaturg and artistic director of DEFA’s animation studio in Dresden. In the 1980s, she invites young freelance artists to create bold, imaginative shorts that transformed East German animation.

6|10 RACETRACK
OT: Laufbahn | GDR, 1982–84, dir. Gudrun Trendafilov, 5 min, color, animation, no dialog

A strong bull frees himself from chains and makes his escape. He is unstoppable and tramples everything in his path. He is not even shying away from restricted areas. However, when a bullfighter seriously challenges him to a duel, he breaks down.

Gudrun Tendrafilov, a Dresden Academy of Arts graduate, came to animation as a painter and graphic artist. She took on multiple roles in her only DEFA project: She is credited as director, script writer, designer, and animator. With transformative black line drawings and sparsely used red, she transferred the story to the big screen. Innovative rhythmic sounds by Manfred Mammitzsch convey the mood of the plot.

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