Strategies of Resistance

The Book

"Strategien der Verweigerung" (lit. "Strategies of Resistance") is a critical history of the nonconformist underground film scene in the last decade of the GDR. It discusses legal, technical and aesthetic aspects of East German underground film production and includes selected film descriptions and analyses.

Löser co-founded "ex. oriente. lux", an archive devoted to East German underground and experimental films, with Karin Fritzsche in 1996; the same year, they also published a volume entitled "Gegenbilder: Filmische Subversion in der DDR 1976-1989" (lit. "Counter-Images: Filmic Subversion in the GDR 1976-1989"). Löser curated "Counter Images DVD", as well as "After Winter Comes Spring", a film retrospective at the 2010 Berlin International Film Festival. (Source: DEFA Film Library)

Samples:

•  Table of Contents (77 KB)
•  Foreword (272 KB)

The Author

Claus Löser, born 1962 in Karl-Marx-Stadt, made his own films in the 1980s in the artistic underground of the GDR. After 1990 he studied film and dramaturgy. Since 1995 he has been working as a freelance film critic, curator and historian. In 1996 he founded the archive "ex.oriente.lux", in which art films from the GDR were collected, among others by A. R. Penck, Cornelia Schleime, Helge Leiberg, Gabriele Kachold and the "Autoperforationsartisten".