Scranton Film Festival Focuses on East German Art and Artists

The ninth annual East German Film Festival at The University of Scranton will expose the active engagement of filmmakers with other visual media, including painting and sculpture. In addition to showing three films made in East Germany between 1961 and 1987, the film festival will feature commentary on both the films and the artists whose lives and work they portray.

The films will be shown on March 29, 30 and 31 in the Pearn Auditorium of Brennan Hall beginning at 7:30 p.m. The screenings, which are free and open to the public, are co-sponsored by the Department of World Languages and Cultures, the Art History Program, and the Hope Horn Gallery at The University of Scranton.

The festival is presented in collaboration with the DEFA (Deutsche Film-Aktiengesellschaft) Film Library at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. The library is the only archive and research center outside of Germany devoted to films from and related to the former German Democratic Republic (GDR). This year marks DEFA’s 70th anniversary.

Jamie Trnka, Ph.D., associate professor of world languages at The University of Scranton, will introduce the films and lead a discussion following each screening.

“Our annual German Film Festival continues to draw substantial audiences from Scranton and surrounding communities,” said Dr. Trnka. “We are so pleased to be able to share a few of these films, which have been made available only recently to English-speaking audiences.”

The following films from DEFA’s collection will be screened at this year’s festival; all three will be shown in German with English subtitles:

Tuesday, March 29: “Käthe Kollwitz: Images of a Life” (1987, 95 minutes, color). Käthe Kollwitz (1867-1945) was 47 years old and a well-established artist in Germany and abroad when Peter, her youngest son, volunteered to fight in WWI and was killed. This painful tragedy changed Kollwitz’s life and art forever. Directed by Ralf Kirsten, this film fits parts of her unpublished letters and diaries together in a mosaic-like self-portrait. “Käthe Kollwitz was, and remains, one of the best loved German artists of all time, known for her sculpture, painting and printmaking, and for her social engagement,” said Dr. Trnka. “Kirsten’s moving account of her life shows how her profound personal grief shaped her art.” (7:30 p.m., Pearn Auditorium, Brennan Hall, free)

Wednesday, March 30: “The Lost Angel” (1966/71, 58 minutes, b/w). This expressionistic film, based on a novel by Franz Fühmann, imagines German artist Ernst Barlach’s response to the news that Nazis have dragged his famous 1927 sculpture The Hovering Angel out of the Güstrow Cathedral. Also directed by Ralf Kirsten, this film was initially banned and then later released. (7:30 p.m., Pearn Auditorium, Brennan Hall, free)

Thursday, March 31: “Five Days – Five Nights” (1961, 107 minutes, color) In a film directed by Lew Amschtam, Heinz Thiel and Anatoli Golowanow, the painter Paul Naumann aids Soviet soldiers tasked with recovering works of art hidden by the Nazis. He draws strength from the political convictions of the girlfriend he mistakenly believed to have died in a concentration camp. Together with German internationalists and antifascists, they locate and restore the city’s valuable treasure. “People familiar with the recent Hollywood film The Monuments Men (Dir. George Clooney, 2014) may be interested to learn about similar military initiatives to recover art undertaken by the Soviet Union,” said Dr. Trnka. “The East German-Soviet co-production, which features an original score by Dmitri Schostakovitsch, set out to tell their story more than 50 years ago.” (7:30 p.m., Pearn Auditorium, Brennan Hall, free)

For more information about the film screenings, please contact Dr. Trnka, at 570-941-7430 or Jamie.trnka@scranton.edu.