On National Coming Out Day (October 11, 2022) and as part of LGBT History Month, Cinema Thinks The World is delighted to present a free screening of Heiner Carow’s landmark film, Coming Out, the first – and last – East German feature film to deal openly with homosexuality. It was the last because Coming Out was also released in cinemas on the day (November 9, 1989) that the Berlin Wall came down, an event that overshadowed the film’s initial release – even as the film has become a cult classic. The screening also coincides with the publication of Professor Kyle Frackman’s landmark study of the film, published by Boydell & Brewer in 2022 – and Professor Frackman will lead a discussion about the film after the screening.
The screening takes place at UBC Robson Square at 6pm and is open to everyone. This is the second of five free screenings that will be held at Robson Square as part of the Cinema Thinks the World series.
Co-sponsored by UBC Connects at Robson Square and the Public Humanities Hub, in partnership with the Consulate General of the Federal Republic of Germany for Vancouver, with promotional support from the Consulate General of Switzerland in Vancouver.
About the film
Philipp, a closeted teacher, is dating a female colleague to keep up appearances. One night, however, he stumbles into a gay bar and falls for a man. Transformed by this love, he is no longer afraid to face up to who he is. Coming Out was the first and last film to deal openly with homosexuality in the former East Germany, with its release having coincided exactly with the fall of the Berlin Wall (November 9, 1989).
Kyle Frackman is an Associate Professor of German and Nordic Studies in the Department of Central, Eastern, and Northern European Studies at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver. His research and teaching interests include 19th- to 21st-century German and Nordic media studies, queer studies (including history of gender and sexuality), media, book, and print history, and the history and culture of the former East Germany. He is the author of Coming Out (Camden House, 2022) and An Other Kind of Home: Gender-Sexual Abjection, Subjectivity, and the Uncanny in Literature and Film (Peter Lang, 2015), as well as the editor of Gender and Sexuality in East German Film: Intimacy and Alienation (with Faye Stewart, Camden House, 2018), Classical Music in the German Democratic Republic: Production and Reception (with Larson Powell, Camden House, 2015), and From Weimar to Christiania: German and Scandinavian Studies in Context (with Florence Feiereisen, Cambridge Scholars Press, 2007).
“Cinema Thinks the World” is sponsored by the Public Humanities Hub at the University of British Columbia. Through a series of public screenings, panel talks, and discussions, it aims to explore the ways in which global cinema represents and helps us to think about the world.
Tuesday, October 11, 2022
6:00 – 9:30 PM
Robson Square
800 Robson Street, Vancouver BC V6Z 3B7
FREE
6:00 PM – Doors open. Light reception with refreshments.
6:30 PM – Introduction by Natascha Daiminger, Science, Press & Cultural Affairs Officer, Consulate General of the Federal Republic of Germany for Vancouver
6:45 PM – Film screening
8:30 PM – Discussion with Dr Kyle Frackman and Q&A, moderated by Dr William Brown.