Representatives of the recently attended the 48th (GSA), a that brings together GSA members, partners and scholars in German, Austrian and Swiss history, literature, culture studies, political science and economics to engage with research, teaching and public scholarship.
“It was a very rewarding conference for us. We co-sponsored four panels and two roundtables with many young U.S. and international researchers who discussed film productions from our archive while applying new approaches and perspectives,” said Mariana Ivanova, academic director of the DEFA Film Library.
While at the conference, which was held in Atlanta, Ga., Sept. 26-29, DEFA Film Library staff celebrated the publication of two new DEFA-related books published by Berghahn Books, “ ,” co-edited by Ivanova and Juliane Scholz, and “ ,” co-edited by Seán Allan and Sebastian Heiduschke. DEFA also announced that Cynthia Shin, of Indiana University Bloomington, was winner of the 2024 Graduate Student Essay Prize for her essay, “Socialist Women amidst the Stars – A Feminist Reading of DEFA’s Space Adventure Trilogy.”
DEFA also co-organized the GSA Arts Night at the conference and presented a pre-conference free stream of the 1990 German autobiographical documentary “ ,” directed by Sibylle Schönemann, which reveals Schönemann’s experiences as a former East German political prisoner who meets with people responsible for her arrest and imprisonment a few weeks after the fall of the Berlin Wall. The streaming event was followed by the in-person premiere of a filmed interview with Schönemann, which DEFA exclusively produced for the Arts Night and Schönemann’s virtual campus visits at various universities this fall.
DEFA will present a screening of “Locked-Up Time” on the UMass Amherst campus that will be followed by a discussion, Thursday, Nov. 7 at 6:30 p.m. in Isenberg Room 137.