The strong and continuous presence of the German Democratic Republic (GDR) at the International Short Film Festival Oberhausen was always the product of complex diplomatic processes of negotiation. The fact that it existed over the space of 35 years testifies to a clear desire to maintain this relationship despite all the disputes. To understand where this interest came from and the conditions to which it was subject, it is helpful to gather together several perspectives that are often considered separate from one another.
The official written correspondence between the festival and the GDR is very well documented for the most part but reflects only a part of the relationship, and possibly even a distorted one. Within which framework might semi-official communication have taken place, and what was it able to achieve?
Beyond the conflicts at the level of cultural politics, Oberhausen played a very special role for the directors of the films. They were often not able to attend themselves; the delegations of the GDR were chosen according to obscure criteria, with functionaries generally favoured. Those who did make it to the festival were there in a complex array of functions: as representatives of their state who were under close observation, but also as artists who encountered new chances to watch films, make contacts and meet an audience that might have a completely different approach to their work.
With Helke Misselwitz, filmmaker and professor, Film University Babelsberg; Wolfgang J. Ruf, festival director from 1975-1985; Felix Mende, curator of the Theme programme. 
Moderated by Cornelia Klauß.

Andreas Kötzing, born in 1978, is a research associate at the Hannah Arendt Institute for Research on Totalitarianism in Dresden and a lecturer at the University of Leipzig. He researches the cultural and media history of the 20th and 21st centuries. His dissertation in modern and contemporary history, defended at the University of Leipzig in 2012, was published in 2013,  Kultur- und Filmpolitik im Kalten Krieg. Die Filmfestivals von Leipzig und Oberhausen in gesamtdeutscher Perspektive.

Oberhausen, 1980: An animated film from the GDR surprises with an unexpected creative density. In Lutz Dammbeck's adaptation of the Brecht poem ‘Ulm 1592’, the dream of flying emerges from pink primordial ooze and is shattered by the rulers' lack of imagination chiselled into Ulm Minster. In his next film, Dammbeck varied the theme and created an even more disillusioned, abysmal allegory with EINMART, which was no longer accepted for the Short Film Festival competition. 

Wolfgang J. Ruf is an author, publicist and lecturer. His range of topics includes cultural policy, theatre, film, media, literature, history, politics and contemporary history. He was editor-in-chief of the magazine Die Deutsche Bühne and press officer of the Deutscher Bühnenverein, as well as chief dramaturge at the Badisches Staatstheater Karlsruhe. From 1975 to 1985 he was director of the West German Short Film Festival.