Memory Activism and Remembering Activism in Documentaries about and around 1989

• In Event: Memory Activism and the Berlin Wall before and after 1989

Abstract

In 1987, Gerd Kroske joined the DEFA Film Studio for Documentary Films where he directed two of the last acclaimed East German documentaries, Leipzig in the Fall (1989, co-dir. Andreas Voigt) and La Vilette (1990). While the earlier captures the vibrant Monday Demonstrations in Leipzig of 1989, which spread over Central and Eastern European cities, the second draws on the East German experimental art scene and a three-day international exhibition of 200 visual and performance artists. Leipzig takes us to the streets to meet protesters, politicians and witnesses in a ravishing canvas of the citizens’ movements for reform and peace. La Vilette, in contrast, highlights an exhibition space on the outskirts of Paris two months after the Berlin Wall opening.
Through the lens of memory activism, this paper seeks to unravel the intersections between these groundbreaking DEFA documentaries and Kroske’s last documentary to date, Drawing a Line (2014). Jenny Wüstenberg has defined the objectives of memory activism as “mnemonic change or to resist change.” While Drawing a Line harnesses the energies of his earlier work, it also questions the promise of 1989 by bringing into the limelight complacency, the normalization of the Wall in the West, as well as failed attempts to deal with betrayal and surveillance. Via film clips and analysis of interviews, I argue that Kroske’s last film opens a discursive space for remembering change and activism, as well as for the necessity to continue to challenge totalitarian hegemony - in personal as well as in political actions.

Author

• Mariana Ivanova, U of Massachusetts Amherst