Lecture
Fight for Reality: Documentary Film and the Cold War

This year, Leipzig University’s “Kulturstudien” („cultural studies”) event series is dedicated to the Leipzig Festival for Documentary and Animated Film (DOK Leipzig). As part of the series, Andreas Kötzing will give a lecture on the festival’s history during the Cold War.

About the lecture:

20th century history is shaped by the rise of mass media, particularly of film. In the conflict between the political systems, films often took centre state in ideological disputes. This is true for fictional cinema, but even more so for documentary films, which aspired to depict reality truthfully. Especially from 1960 – with the emergence of lighter camera technology – documentary cinema experienced an aesthetic and political boom. With “Cinema Verité” and “Direct Cinema”, different concepts of the representability of the present established themselves. Against the background of the Cold War, documentary movies invariably had a political implication: Which images were “real”, which ones merely propaganda? Which personal influence did filmmakers exert? What role did the festivals for documentary movies play which were established from the mid-1950s in Mannheim, Oberhausen and Leipzig, among others? On the basis of a variety of film examples, the lecture will portray the development of documentary film in both German states during the Cold War period. A special focus will be on the societal debates sparked by the films and festivals.

Time: Tuesday, 11.10.2022, 16:00-17:30

Location: Leipzig University, Goethestraße 3-5, Seminar room 1.25/1.26

The lecture will simultaneously be streamed live.

Further information on the programme of “Kulturstudien” can be found here.