In 1987 the English Amber Film Collective, in conjunction with the state-controlled East-German DEFA film production company, made a documentary about daily life in the fishing and shipbuilding city of Rostock in East Germany. The film, From Marks and Spencer to Marx and Engels, was released in 1988, one year before the Fall of the Berlin Wall. East-German audiences responded enthusiastically, while the GDR authorities cancelled screenings at the last minute. More than twenty-five years later, British Filmmaker Ellin Hare returned to Rostock, having traced the key characters in the original film. From US to Me, released in 2016, looks back at the changes that came with the collapse of the GDR and the unification of East and West Germany. Asked about the emotional power of the experience, one of the interviewees said, “We’ve been waiting all these years for someone to come and ask us these questions.”

Ellin Hare worked at the BBC as an editor, made several short films and was a member of Frontroom Productions, co-writing and editing the feature film Acceptable Levels before joining Amber Films in 1983. Her films have  been screened on BBC or Channel 4 and Arte or ZDF as well as cinemas worldwide. Ellin Hare's many  awards include the Prix Europa and Prix Futura for Dream On and Prix Europa for The Scar. 

Co-sponsored by the Center for German Studies, the Department of Germanic Languages and Literatures, the European Studies Program, and the Wunderbar Together Campus Weeks Initiative of the Federal Republic of Germany. For more information, contact: Manuela Achilles, ma6cq@virginia.edu.