DEFA-Stiftung
Franz-Mehring-Platz 1
10243 Berlin
GERMANY
T: +49 30 2978-4810
The DEFA Foundation is an incorporated non-profit foundation based in Berlin, established by the Federal Government of Germany on December 15, 1998.
The DEFA film collection includes the entire cinematic production of the DDR film studios from almost five decades. This includes about:
- 700 feature films and 450 short fiction films
- 950 animated films
- 2,000 documentary films and 2,500 serial films (Newsreels, etc.)
- 6,700 Germanlanguage synchronized foreign films
- 200 coproduced feature, documentary, and animation films that were made after 1990 and usually with another company or television station
- unpublished and remaining materials from DEFA productions
- photographs, posters, scripts and the literary originals, advertising materials, musical scores, and authorization documents
DEFA film collection, considered an important part of Germany's cultural heritage, were assigned to the DEFA Foundation as the main responsibility for Foundation operations. The mission of the DEFA Foundation is to pass on DEFA cultural heritage for the upcoming generations as a source for contemporary historical, political, and aesthetical research and artistic discovery. The Federal Archives (Das Bundesarchiv) preserves the film source materials and are committed to the long-term preservation of the DEFA film collection.
With around 13,500 films, the DEFA Foundation sees itself as an institution wanting to convey cultural knowledge. Its films are not only part of cultural memory but also serve current engagements with socially relevant topics in order to discuss life and ethics questions.
In addition to the DEFA productions, the rights of the DEFA Foundation include extensive archives of audiovisual eyewitness accounts. These include the Bill-Meyers-Archive, the Blickpunkt- Archive, the Wydocks-Archive, Thomas Grimm Contemporary Witness archive, and the Cintec Archive. The archive includes around 9,000 broadcasted cassettes of contemporary witness reports and documentation of recent German history, politics, science, culture, and everyday life. The foundation keeps these collections as part of cultural memory and makes them accessible to the public.
