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“Anthology joins forces with the German Film Office and the DEFA Film Library at the University of Massachusetts Amherst to present a survey of the work of East German filmmaker Helke Misselwitz, the first-ever retrospective to take place in the United States.
“Misselwitz made her mark early on as a documentary filmmaker, chronicling with great sensitivity and artfulness the citizens and society of East Germany in the years leading up to and following the fall of the Berlin Wall. She began her career making short documentaries, including numerous films for the DEFA Studio for Documentary Films, before making her first documentary feature (also for DEFA), WINTER ADÉ (1988), a pioneering and profoundly illuminating group portrait of East Germany as seen through the eyes of women – in particular the wide variety of women Misselwitz encountered as she traveled through the GDR by train. WINTER ADÉ immediately established Misselwitz as one of the most gifted non-fiction filmmakers of her generation, a status confirmed by the films that followed, including WHO’S AFRAID OF THE BOGEYMAN (1989) and BULKY TRASH (1990), both of which extended her interest in the lives and perspectives of those at the margins of East German society. With 1992’s HERZSPRUNG, Misselwitz made a bold leap into fiction filmmaking. Calling to mind Fassbinder’s ALI: FEAR EATS THE SOUL, HERZSPRUNG retains Misselwitz’s deep social and political engagement, while demonstrating an unexpected stylistic flair and an unmistakable talent for storytelling.
“This retrospective encompasses all the feature films mentioned above, as well as a selection of short films (which have been newly restored by the DEFA Foundation, with several subtitled for the first time), her 1996 fictional feature LITTLE ANGEL (1996), and one of her most recent works, the short documentary HELGA PARIS, PHOTOGRAPHER (2019).” —Anthology