The DEFA Film Library at UMass Amherst will host the 12th biennial Summer Film Institute, SCREENED ENVIRONMENTS: Intersections of Built, Natural and Social Spaces in East Germany, from June 22 to 28, 2025. This year’s Institute, held on the UMass campus, welcomes 40 national and international scholars, researchers, and film curators. Together, they will explore cinematic depictions of urban, rural and industrial spaces to examine how (East) German films address questions of social and environmental justice at moments of crisis or impasse, and to draw connections to contemporary moments and imagining a more socially and environmentally just future.

The weeklong Institute will be co-directed by Maria Stehle (University of Tennessee Knoxville) and Stephan Ehrig (University of Glasgow, UK). A keynote lecture titled “Ruderal City: Seeding Livable Worlds for the Future” by Bettina Stoetzer (MIT, Cambridge) opens the Institute on June 22 and will provide a conceptual foundation based in the environmental humanities and studies of the Anthropocene that interlinks the built and the natural worlds.

The Institute is accompanied by a public film festival (June 22-27) that is free, in-person, and open to everyone. It presents 14 fiction and documentary films; most are North American premieres and have been subtitled for the first time by the DEFA Film Library team. The film selection reflects on the Summer Film Institute’s key topics and will take place at Amherst Cinema, UMass and Smith College. A highlight of the festival will be the free community screening of Neubau (Germany, 2020, dir. Johannes M. Schmit), a story about a trans person who lives in a rural place and longs for city life, presented by leading actor and scriptwriter Tucké Royale. See the program below for full details about the festival!

The complete program for the public film festival is available here:  umass.edu/defa