SOLO SUNNY (1980) in 35mm

(Konrad Wolf, 1980, 104 min, 35mm)

The last film of director Konrad Wolf’s three-decade career as East Germany’s preeminent filmmaker, SOLO SUNNY is a crowning achievement in every sense—an empathetic, sharply-drawn character study that exudes care, intelligence, and an undeniable grasp of the cinematic medium. The film follows Sunny (Renate Krössner), a young and creatively unfulfilled singer compelled to leave the security of a gig in a dead-end traveling revue as she enters an uncertain relationship with an inscrutable, unromantic philosopher (Alexander Lang). With her award-winning performance, Krössner creates an utterly distinctive figure at once irrepressible and vulnerable, yet Sunny’s singularity spoke to a generation of East German filmgoers seeking something intimate and personal in a cinema dominated by social directives. Like its titular character, SOLO SUNNY is subversive in spirit, if not by design: it’s simply too true to life to make for proper socialist realism. Paradoxically (yet unsurprisingly) it remains one of East German cinema’s most unifying and beloved works.

Presented in conjunction with the Goethe-Institut in celebration of Konrad Wolf’s centenary, SOLO SUNNY screens in an archival 35mm print from the DEFA Film Library at University of Amherst. Lauren Stokes, associate professor of History at Northwestern, will offer an introduction to the film.

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