7:30 on Wednesday, March 13th
137 Isenberg School of Management
UMass Amherst
DEFA Chilean Short Movies
The so-called “Chilean DEFA Films,” a selection of which will be introduced in this Retrospective of Juan Forch films, were the result of collaboration between Chilean and German artists. With their transcultural and even trans-socialist formulas, these films hold an uneasy position within the DEFA canon. The Chilean director and poet Juan Forch (1948-) immigrated via Mexico to East Germany after the military coup in 1973. He joined the DEFA Studio for Animation Films in Dresden and learned the craft of animation. Between 1975 and 1978, he made several animation and documentary films drawing on his Chilean background and his political experiences in exile. The photo collages Chile Lives (1976) and Nobody Can Stop the Revolution (1976), the latter in collaboration with media artist Lutz Dammbeck, proclaim the hope of a victory of the progressive forces over the Pinochet dictatorship. The collage Chile (1975) by Forch and Jörg Herrmann reveals the USA as the backer of the military coup on September 11, 1973. In 1976, Forch filmed Chilean students in Dresden drawing a mural in honor of former President Salvador Allende. The cut-out animation film Neutron Peace? (1977) offers a warning against a nuclear war emanating from the USA. Forch creates a visually and colorfully powerful epic about the life of the indigenous Mapuche in the cut-out film Lautaro (1977), his most comprehensive work at the Dresden studio. Finally, the animation film Rosaura (1978) by Lothar Barke atmospherically translates a poem by Juan Forch into images.
Film Screening
Wednesday, March 13th
Free and open to the public
Co-Sponsored by:
Chile
(Chile, 1975, dirs. Juan Forch, Jörg Herrmann, 2 min, color, silhouette animation, in German with English subtitles)
This short animation collage uncovers the financial backing of the Chilean Junta bosses by the US. Screened at the 1976 Oberhausen Int. Film Festival.
Chile Lives
(Chile lebt, 1976, dirs. Michael Börner, Juan Forch, 2 min, color, animation, in German with English subtitles)
This short, animated piece of agitprop fiercely expresses the hopes of the Chilean people.
La Brigada – A Mural for the Unidad Popular in Dresden
(Brigada – Ein Beitrag zur Solidarität anläßlich der 16. Arbeiterfestspiele 1976 in Dresden, 1976-77, dirs. Juan Forch, Rolf Hofmann, 11 min, color, doc, in German with English subtitles)
During the 16th Workers’ Festival in Dresden in 1976, a student group of Chilean emigrants paints a mural symbolically depicting the activity of the Unidad Popular during Salvador Allende’s reign. Festival guests comment on this work. Music by Chilean music group Jaspampa, formed in Leipzig in 1972.
Lautaro
(Lautaro, 1977, dir. Juan Forch, 18 min, color, cutout animation, in German with English subtitles)
The Mapuche people always pray to their gods in the face of hardships like drought or disease. When the Spanish conquistadors arrive on horseback, they seem to be supernatural beings, and the powers of the traditional gods fail. The Spaniards take the indigenous people captive and force them to work as slaves. While living in slavery, the Mapuche boy Lautaro discovers that the Spaniards are humans devoid of godly powers. He learns to use their weapons and organizes a rebellion against the colonizers. This short film uses cutout animation to retell a classic Chilean legend. Chilean painter Hernando León was part of the film’s production group, and Vivienne (Forch) Barry animated the puppets.
Neutron Peace?
(Neutronenfrieden?, 1977, dir. Juan Forch, 3 min, color, cut-out animation, no dialogue)
A group of playing children are suddenly hit by a neutron bomb. A businessman collects and sells the clothes they leave behind. A cut-out animated film.
Nobody Can Stop the Revolution
(Die Revolution kann keiner aufhalten, 1976, dir. Juan Forch, 6 min, color, animation, in German with English subtitles)
Combining collage animation and live action, this short depicts the achievements of the Chilean people under the Allende government and the subsequent reversal of this progress following the military coup. The collages were created by East German media artist Lutz Dammbeck; the Chilean artists Juan Forch and Vivienne Barry did the animation.
Rosaura
(Rosaura, 1978, dir. Lothar Barke, 6 min, color, animation, in German with English subtitles)
This film visualizes humanity’s quest to relentlessly pursue goals. In the human fight for progress, the march forward cannot be stopped, even when individual people become weary and die. This animated short is based on a poem by the Chilean filmmaker and poet Juan Forch. Chilean painter Hernando León created the design.
Film Screening
Followed By
Discussion and Q&A with
Isabel Mardones
(Film Curator and Archivist at the Goethe-Institut (Chile))
Isabel Mardones graduated from the Journalism School of the Catholic University of Chile in Santiago in 1986. In 1987-88 she spent a year at the Film and TV Academy in Munich, Germany, with a DAAD scholarship. Since 2003 she has managed the film archive and film programming at the Goethe-Institut in Santiago de Chile. She has been a collaborator for the publication of the Cineteca Nacional de Chile Imágenes de Chile en el mundo/Images of Chile in the world (2008), with further ongoing research to find audiovisual materials about Chile in German film archives. Together with Mónica Villarroel, Isabel Mardones is the co-author of the book Señales contra el olvido. Cine chileno recobrado/Signs against oblivion. Recovered chilean films (2012), published in Chile by Cuarto Propio.
Mariana Ivanova
Mariana Ivanova is Associate Professor for German Film and Media and Academic Director of the DEFA Film Library at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. She is also the director of several documentaries about Eastern European filmmakers. Her scholarship focuses on twentieth- and twenty-first-century German and European cinemas and cultures, theories of transnational filmmaking and coproduction, film adaptation, artistic networks, dissidence, and cultural mediation. Ivanova’s 2020 book, Cinema of Collaboration: DEFA Coproductions and International Exchange in Cold War Europe repositions the East German film industry within world cinema via the lenses of cultural prestige and film cooperation. She most recently co-edited the volume “Science on Screen and Paper: Media Cultures of Knowledge Production in Cold War Europe” (forthcoming in August 2024).