What´s left? Films from former East Germany
As part of the 2018-2019 initiative
Year of German-American Friendship, encompassed by the motto “Wunderbar Together”, Goethe Pop Up Kansas City invites everyone to its
Pop Up Film Haus to discover German cinema through a curated selection of films. Each film will be shown in German with English subtitles.
Together with our partner Stray Cat Film Center, we invite you to
What’s left? Films from former East Germany, a series of film screenings curated by Dr. Larson Powell, Professor of Film Studies at UMKC. Dr. Powell will lead a discussion after each screening about the film’s content and contexts, its relation to film history, and its artistic form and style.
This week’s screening at Stray Cat Film Center:
Barbara (2012)
Director: Christian Petzold
Cast: Nina Hoss, Ronald Zehrfeld, Jasna Fritzi Bauer
About nine years before the fall of the Wall: Barbara, a doctor from Berlin, applies for an exit permit from the GDR. She is arrested and transferred to a provincial hospital after her release in the summer of 1980. While her lover prepares for her escape to the West via the Baltic Sea, Barbara works as a paediatric surgeon, under frequent observation and controls. Her new boss André appears to be cooperating with the state security employees - but how far would he go if a serious case were to occur? He does, at least, seem to approve of Barbara’s commitment to the young outsider, Stella. Is he in love with his colleague? On the day of her escape, Barbara makes an only somewhat surprising decision.
Christian Petzold’s film, awarded the Silver Bear for Best Director at the Berlin International Film Festival 2012, is a quiet, unexcited film with great attention to detail thus offering a very exact picture of life in the GDR - far removed from any ideological discourse.
The
Pop Up Film Haus is part of the project
Wunderbar: A Celebration of German Film. From
Beloved Sisters to
A Coffee in Berlin and
Young Goethe in Love, from
The Blue Angel to
The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari - we are celebrating German-American friendship with our partner Kanopy by bringing 48 German films to your screens.
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