Defeat or Liberation? Forum for East German Studies

Defeat or Liberation – 1945 in Film

7 May 2010: Forum for East German Studies

On the occasion of the 65th anniversary of 1945, the Centre for East German Studies, University of Reading, cordially invites everyone interested to a one-day research forum on the depiction of the end of World War II and its immediate aftermath in European feature film. The forum will take East German war films as its point of departure for a broad discussion on influences and points of contact between approaches to the topic on both sides of the Iron Curtain. The morning session of the forum will therefore present papers on important East German war films while the afternoon session will introduce films from other national cinemas such as Poland, Italy, America, and Great Britain and discuss their view on the events.

The forum will take place on

Friday 7 May 2010

10.30 am in URS 2s12, Whiteknights Campus

Programme

10.30am

Patrick Major (Reading) ‘Die Abenteuer des Werner Holt’ (1965)

11.00am

Sean Allan (Warwick) War and its Others. Germans as Victims in Konrad Wolf’s ‘Ich war 19′ (1968)

11.30am

Beatrice Heuser/ Cyril Buffet (Reading) Political Lessons derived from History: How the Cinema of the GDR represented Wars.

12.00am

Richard McKenzie (Reading) European Images of Defeat in the immediate post war Period

2.00pm

Jennifer Smyth (Warwick) Fred Zinnemann: War and Resistance

2.30pm

Richard Bosworth (Reading) ‘Rome: Open City’ (1945)

3.00 pm

Chris Wagstaff (Reading) ‘Ashes and Diamonds’ (1958)

For further information please contact Dr Ute Wölfel