FLORENCE, S.C. – The Francis Marion University Cinema 2007-08 Film Series will feature Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck’s “The Lives of Others” on April 1.

The film may be viewed at 3:30 and 8 p.m. in the Cauthen Educational Media Center’s Lowrimore Auditorium. Admission is free and open to the public.

This thriller involves the monitoring of the cultural scene of East Berlin by agents of the Stasi, the German Democratic Republic's secret police.

In East Germany in 1984, Stasi Hauptmann Gerd Wiesler, a keenly idealistic supporter of the socialist regime, is shown interrogating a prisoner who is suspected to know who helped another person defect to the West. In the film, this is juxtaposed with his playing a recording of the interrogation while lecturing a class on Stasi methods.