The Berlin School

"The informal movement that critics like to call the Berlin School, " as director Christoph Hochhäusler puts it, is a loose affiliation of filmmakers who emerged around the time the Berlin Wall fell. The founding figures--Thomas Arslan, Christian Petzold, and Angela Schanelec--and their younger colleagues are not bound by a manifesto or by any singular aesthetic. Nonetheless, their observant portrayals of characters in flux offer a compelling cinematic expression of the search for new identities in a time of societal change. The films of the Berlin School have resonated profoundly since the mid-1990s, making it one of the most influential auteur movements to emerge from Europe in the new millennium.

Germany’s most important filmmaking movement in conversation with its peers across the globe.

The contemporary German directors collectively known as the "Berlin School" constitute the most significant filmmaking movement to come out of Germany since the New German Cinema of the 1970s, not least because their films mark the emergence of a new film language. The Berlin School filmmakers, including Christian Petzold, Thomas Arslan, Angela Schanelec, Christoph Hochhäusler, Ulrich Köhler, Benjamin Heisenberg, Maren Ade, and Valeska Grisebach, are reminiscent of the directors of the New German Autorenkino and of French cinéma des auteurs of the 1960s. This is the first book-length study of the Berlin School in any language. Its central thesis - that the movement should be regarded as a "counter-cinema" - is built around the unusual style of realism employed in its films, a realism that presents images of a Germany that does not yet exist. Abel concludes that it is precisely how these films' images and sounds work that renders them political: they are political not because they are message-driven films but because they are made politically, thus performing a "redistribution of the sensible" - a direct artistic intervention in the way politics partitions ways of doing and making, saying and seeing. Marco Abel is Professor of English and Film Studies at the University of Nebraska, Lincoln.

The contemporary German directors collectively known as the "Berlin School" constitute the most significant filmmaking movement to come out of Germany since the New German Cinema of the 1970s, not least because their films mark the emergence of a new film language. The Berlin School filmmakers, including Christian Petzold, Thomas Arslan, Angela Schanelec, Christoph Hochhäusler, Ulrich Köhler, Benjamin Heisenberg, Maren Ade, and Valeska Grisebach, are reminiscent of the directors of the New German Autorenkino and of French cinéma des auteurs of the 1960s. This is the first book-length study of the Berlin School in any language. Its central thesis - that the movement should be regarded as a "counter-cinema" - is built around the unusual style of realism employed in its films, a realism that presents images of a Germany that does not yet exist. Abel concludes that it is precisely how these films' images and sounds work that renders them political: they are political not because they are message-driven films but because they are made politically, thus performing a "redistribution of the sensible" - a direct artistic intervention in the way politics partitions ways of doing and making, saying and seeing. Marco Abel is Professor of English and Film Studies at the University of Nebraska, Lincoln.

“A rich and welcome addition to the surge of scholarly interest in the Berlin School.” —Studies in European Cinema Through a study of the contemporary German film movement the Berlin School, Olivia Landry examines how narrative film has responded to our highly digitalized and mediatized age, not with a focus on stasis and realism, but by turning back to movement, spectacle, and performance. She argues that a preoccupation with presence, liveness, and affect—all of which are viewed as critical components of live performance—can be found in many of the films of the Berlin School. Challenging the perception that the Berlin School is a sheer adherent of “slow cinema,” Landry closely analyzes the use of movement, dynamism, presence, and speed in a broad selection of films to show how filmmakers such as Christian Petzold, Angela Schanelec, Thomas Arslan, and Christoph Hochhäusler invoke the pulse of the kinesthetic and the tangibly affective. Her analysis draws on an array of film theories from early materialism to body theories, phenomenology, and contemporary affect theories. Arguing that these theories readily and energetically forge a path from film to performance, Landry traces a trajectory between the two through which live experience, presence, spectacle, intersubjectivity, and the body in motion emerge and powerfully intersect. Ultimately, Movement and Performance in Berlin School Cinema expands the methodological and disciplinary boundaries of film studies by offering new ways of articulating and understanding movement in cinema.

Berlin School Glossary is the first major publication to mark the increasing international importance of a group of contemporary German and Austrian filmmakers initially known by the name the Berlin School: Christian Petzold, Thomas Arslan, Christoph Hochhäusler, Jessica Hausner, and others. The study elaborates on the innovative strategies and formal techniques that distinguish these films, specifically questions of movement, space, spectatorship, representation, desire, location, and narrative. Abandoning the usual format of essay-length analyses of individual films and directors, the volume is organized as an actual glossary with entries such as bad sex, cars, the cut, endings, familiar places, forests, ghosts, hotels, interiority, landscapes, siblings, surveillance, swimming pools, and wind. This unique format combined with an informative introduction will be essential to scholars and fans of the German New Wave

The increased movement of people globally has changed the face of national and international schooling. Higher levels of mobility have resulted from both the willing movement of students and their families with a desire to create a better life, and the forced movement of refugee families travelling away from war, famine and other extreme circumstances. This book explores the idea that the complex connections created by the forces of globalisation have led to a diminishing difference between what were once described as international schools and national schools. By examining a selection of responses from students attending international schools in Brazil, the United Kingdom, France, Germany, the Philippines and Switzerland, the book discusses key issues surrounding identity and cosmopolitan senses of belonging. Chapters draw from current literature and recent qualitative research to highlight the concerns that students face within the international school community, including social, psychological, and academic difficulties. The interviews provide a rich and unique body of knowledge, demonstrating how perceptions of identity and belonging are changing, especially with affiliation to a national or a global identity. The notion that international students have become global citizens through their affiliation to a global rather than a national identity exhibits a changing and potentially irreversible trend. Global Identity in Multicultural and International Educational Contexts will be of key interest to researchers, academics and policy makers involved with international schooling and globalised education.