Introduction by Mariana Ivanova, Academic Director of the DEFA Film Library
Franz Xaver Stannebein (Jörg Gudzuhn), a young boy at the turn of the century, wants nothing more than to fly. He carries this obsessive dream into adulthood as a merchant in Spain. One day, he meets German industrialists who want to fund his idea, but they ask him to build an airfield in Spain first. When the Nazis use his designed field during the Spanish Civil War, Stannebein feels betrayed. To register his complaint, he goes to Germany.
After World War II, Stannebein’s grandson searches for him, and the trail leads to an asylum. Director Rainer Simon brought together an exceptional team to create DEFA’s most unconventional film, including Lutz Dammbeck (animation) and Friedrich Goldmann (score).
Director: Rainer Simon
East-Germany 1982
116 min.
German with English subtitles
Mariana Ivanova is Associate Professor for German Film and Media and the Academic Director of the DEFA Film Library at UMass Amherst. Her scholarship focuses on twentieth and twenty-first century German and European cinemas and cultures, theories of transnational filmmaking and coproduction, artistic networks and cultural mediation. Ivanova’s 2019 monograph, Cinema of Collaboration: DEFA Coproductions and International Exchange in Cold War Europe, was finalist for the international Willy Hass award. She has published her research in several edited volumes about Central European cinema.
