L.A. features innovative East German films
By Shirley Mak
March 3, 2009 9:01 p.m.
Twenty years ago on Nov. 9, 1989, the Berlin Wall fell, signaling the beginning of a remarkably transformative event in both German history and across the world.
In accordance with the twentieth anniversary, the Wende Museum, in collaboration with the DEFA Film Library at the University of Massachusetts Amherst and UCLA Library, will be featuring a two-week film series titled “Wende Flicks: Last Films from East Germany” at selected locations across Los Angeles, including UCLA’s James Bridges Theater. The series will run through March 12 in locations around Los Angeles and is free and open to the public.
“Wende,” meaning “turning point” in German and signaling the end of the Cold War and the reunification of Germany, captures the spirit of these screenings, which consist of 10 feature films and four documentaries, many of which will be screened outside Germany for the very first time. About a year in the making and encompassing film genres ranging from comedy to extremely dark pieces, the Wende Flicks series is innovative in a variety of ways.
Justinian Jampol is the founder and president of the Wende Museum in Culver City and a 2000 UCLA graduate. “Wende Flicks represents a landmark for us and for East German film,” Jampol said. “The museum is extremely interested in preserving unique and rich sources and being able to engage a wide audience. We started our film digitization project less than a year ago, and nothing like it has been done before.”
The first screenings to take place at UCLA will be today at the James Bridges Theater, following a film symposium at the Young Research Library that will feature several East German film directors, some of whom will be presenting and premiering their films for the first time in 20 years. The directors belong to a group of illustrious filmmakers who embarked on their artistic endeavors during a time when social and political changes in Germany were especially prominent, thus offering a window into the Wende period that has never been seen before.
“The symposium is real exciting because it underscores the academic nature of the project,” Jampol said. “The films are fun and interesting to watch, but we wanted to give them an intellectual context as well.”
According to Jampol, one of the reasons for extending the Wende Flicks series to the UCLA campus was to be able to engage students in the rich history and intrigue that the Wende films have to offer.
“One of the very interesting aspects of this program is going to be the layer of perceptions from an American and (particularly) a UCLA student audience,” he said. “This is a generation that has been born right about the time that the Berlin Wall fell. It’s going to be interesting to see reactions from the first post-war generation. We are all products of our culture and we’re going to be seeing this through the lens of post-1989 American culture. That’s part of the experience of watching the films.”
As a university with one of the top-ranking film schools in the nation, UCLA should be aware of the long-standing tradition that film has as a medium that both successfully and uniquely captures the historical, political and social aspects of a rapidly changing society. For these East German films in particular, this theory resonates with special significance. While they have the benefit of being produced by a country with a long and rich film-making tradition ““ it was Germany, after all, that pioneered the development of cinema with the Skladanowsky brothers’ self-invented film projector in 1895 ““ these films are also a true reflection of their time.
“Even if you don’t know anything about this period, you will be impressed with the ways in which East German filmmakers were able to make the most of their situations and make something totally unique from Western film in the process,” Jampol said.
“There’s always the fusion and tension between the film as a film and the context in which it was produced and distributed. Now if you add onto that the historical context of the Cold War, it underscores the tremendous tension ““ historically, socially and culturally ““ that existed when the films were produced. … To experience (this) in a (modern-day) context adds a completely different level of reflection and makes the film that much more intriguing.”
