Nation And Identity In The New German Cinema

This book investigates the construction of national identity in films of the New German Cinema using – for the first time – an explicitly cultural studies methodology.

Comprising a discussion of 'Alice in the Cities', 'The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant', 'Heimat' and 'The American Friend', Julia Knight's study examines the American dominance of German film, the framework of European art cinema and how German cinema engages with contemporary German reality.

"Hans-Jürgen Syberberg is an original, the most controversial of all the New German directors and a figure who has long been at the vanguard of the resurgence of experimental filmmaking in his homeland. Syberberg’s most characteristic films examine recent German history: a documentary, for example, about Richard Wagner’s daughter-in-law, who was a close friend of Hitler (The Confessions of Winifred Wagner [1975]). But especially “historical” is his trilogy covering one hundred years of Germany’s past, including, most famously, Hitler—A Film from Germany, also known as Our Hitler (1977). In this film and other works, Syberberg unites fictional narrative and documentary footage in a style that is at once cinematic and theatrical, mystical and magical. Hans-Jürgen Syberberg, the Film Director as Critical Thinker: Essays and Interviews is the first edited book in English devoted to this director’s work, and includes his most important English-language interviews as well as some of the best English-language essays on his work. In sum, this book is a significant contribution not only to the study of Syberberg’s oeuvre, but also to the study of German history and politics in the second half of the twentieth century."

Cinema and Nation considers the ways in which film production and reception are shaped by ideas of national belonging and examines the implications of globalisation for the concept of national cinema.

When New German cinema directors like R. W. Fassbinder, Ulrike Ottinger, and Werner Schroeter explored issues of identity—national, political, personal, and sexual—music and film style played crucial roles. Most studies of the celebrated film movement, however, have sidestepped the role of music, a curious oversight given its importance to German culture and nation formation. Caryl Flinn’s study reverses this trend, identifying styles of historical remembrance in which music participates. Flinn concentrates on those styles that urge listeners to interact with difference—including that embodied in Germany’s difficult history—rather than to "master" or "get past" it. Flinn breaks new ground by considering contemporary reception frameworks of the New German Cinema, a generation after its end. She discusses transnational, cultural, and historical contexts as well as the sexual, ethnic, national, and historical diversity of audiences. Through detailed case studies, she shows how music helps filmgoers engage with a range of historical subjects and experiences. Each chapter of The New German Cinema examines a particular stylistic strategy, assessing music’s role in each. The study also examines queer strategies like kitsch and camp and explores the movement’s charged construction of human bodies on which issues of ruination, survival, memory, and pleasure are played out.

This volume explores the notion of German cinema as both a national and increasingly transnational entity. It brings together chapters that analyse the international circuits of development and distribution that shape the emerging films as part of a contemporary “German cinema”, the events and spectacles that help frame and re-frame national cinemas and their discoverability, and the well-known filmmakers who sit at the vanguard of the contemporary canon. Thereby, it explores what we understand as German cinema today and the many points where this idea of national cinema can be interrogated, expanded and opened up to new readings. At the heart of this interrogation is a keen awareness of the technological, social, economic and cultural changes that have an impact on global cinemas more broadly: new distribution channels such as streaming platforms and online film festivals, and audience engagement that transcends national borders as well as the cinema space. International film production and financing further heightens the transnational aspects of cinema, a quality that is often neglected in marketing and branding of the filmic product. With particular focus on film festivals, this volume explores the tensions between the national and transnational in film, but also in the events that sit at the heart of global cinema culture. It includes contributions from filmmakers, cultural managers and other professionals in the field of film and cinema, as well as scholarly contributions from academics researching popular culture, film, and events in relation to Germany.

This study of New German cinema identifies different styles of historical remembrance in which music participates.