The DEFA Film Library's (East) German Film Collection.

The (East) German film collection is presented by the DEFA film library at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. The DEFA film library is the only archive and research center outside Europe devoted to the study of a broad spectrum of filmmaking from or related to East Germany from 1946 to the present. Its film series have been featured at venues throughout North America and elsewhere in the world. The DEFA film library has access to over 7500 films that were made at the GDR's DEFA Studios between the end of WWII and German unification in 1990. These films ran the gamut: dramas and comedies, love stories and war stories, Westerns and sci-fi films, animation films, documentaries, newsreels and Cold War propaganda. DEFA, the acronym for Deutsche Film Aktiengesellschaft (German film company), was heir to some of the greats of German film history and the historic compound in Potsdam-Babelsberg where legendary Ufa directors made such landmark films asMetropolis andThe Blue Angel.