FRANK BEYER – GERMAN FILM DIRECTOR

  The University of Waterloo welcomes Frank Beyer to campus on Friday, November 8th 2002.  Mr. Beyer was born in 1932, and after working in theatre in Berlin moved to Prague to study directing at the famed Prague Film School (FAMU) with the likes of Milos Forman and other budding Czechoslovakian directors. After completing his thesis film, Zwei Mütter (Two Mothers, 1957), he worked as a director’s assistant at the DEFA Feature Film Studios, the government-owned film production company of East Germany.  He directed a series of powerful and historically significant films at DEFA, but his 1966 film, Spur der Steine (Traces of Stones) was banned by East Germany for being "politically inappropriate" and he was not allowed to work again as a film director until his re-emergence in 1974 with the tragic comedy Jakob der Lügner (Jacob the Liar).  He has also directed many films for television, including Nikolaikirche, a dramatization of the peaceful revolution in Leipzig that led to the collapse of East Germany in 1989.
   
 

Friday, November 8th – 
Reading

2:30pm, HH334: Frank Beyer will read from his autobiography Wenn der Wind sich dreht and take questions (the reading will be in German, questions and discussion will be in German and English).
   
 

Friday, November 8th – 
Film Screening

 

6pm, ECH 1219 (admission free): Frank Beyer will introduce the film Jakob der Lügner/Jakob the Liar  (German with English subtitles).
Jakob the Liar (synopsis):  Poland, 1944:  Jakob Heym is summoned to the ghetto's district police station.  While at the police station, Jakob hears a news report from the radio saying that the Russians are twenty kilometres from Bezanika.  The next day he relays this report to a despondent friend who is about to commit suicide. The news gives his friend a renewed reason to live.  When asked how he knows this bit of information, Jakob lies: "I know, because I have a radio."  Radios are banned in the ghetto, but everyone is desperate for news from the outside world, and Jakob starts to make up news reports.  His lies help to alleviate the unbearable conditions of ghetto life, but they cannot stop the machinery of death. Jakob der Lügner was nominated for an Oscar as the Best Foreign Film. Columbia Pictures released a re-make of the same film in 1999, with Robin Williams in the leading role.
   
 

Frank Beyer’s visit has been made possible with the generous assistance of the DEFA Film Library, Goethe-Institut Inter Nationes (Toronto), the Program in Jewish Studies, and the Departments of Fine Arts and Germanic and Slavic Studies.   

For more information please contact Dr. James M. Skidmore (888-4567, x3687; skidmore@uwaterloo.ca; http://www.arts.uwaterloo.ca/~skidmore).

For a map of campus and parking locations, click here.