Film Screening: Thursday, May 7th at 7:00 pm in Logan Center 201 (915 E 60th St, Chicago, IL 60637)
Lecture: Friday, May 8th from 5:00 pm to 6:30 pm in the ground floor community room at the Center for the Study of Gender and Sexuality (5733 S University Ave, Chicago, IL 60637)
About
Join us for a two-part event exploring queer East German cinema with Kyle Frackman, Associate Professor of German and Nordic Media Studies at the University of British Columbia.
On May 7th, we invite you to a screening of the DEFA feature Coming Out (dir. Heiner Carow, 1989)—the first East German film to center homosexuality—alongside a 1977 Super-8 short film produced by members of the Homosexuelle Interessengemeinschaft Berlin (HIB), the GDR’s first gay rights organization.
Coming Out follows Philipp, an East Berlin schoolteacher whose relationship with his partner is upended when he falls in love with another man, forcing him to confront the emotional and social costs of a life lived in concealment. Premiering on November 9, 1989—the night the Berlin Wall fell—the film, when paired with the HIB short, brings grassroots queer self-representation into dialogue with a state-produced portrayal of gay life in the GDR. The screening will conclude with a Q&A featuring Kyle Frackman, whose research focuses on queer studies and East German cultural history.
On May 8th, Professor Frackman will give a lecture titled “Beyond Coming Out: Queer East German Media and Quiet Revolution.”
The screening and lecture are generously sponsored by the Department of Germanic Studies, the Center for the Study of Gender and Sexuality, the Department of Cinema and Media Studies, and the DEFA Film Library at UMass Amherst.