German Film History

Taught in the Department of Germanic and Slavic Studies, University of Victoria, Fall 2011
Course by Dr. Kat Sark

Course Outline: 

(Subject to changes / in progress)

DATE

Week 1
September 13, 2011 
TOPICS

1920s Expressionism

The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (dir. Robert Wiene, 1920)
Metropolis (dir. Fritz Lang, 1927) 

READINGS: 
  • Anton Kaes, From Hitler to Heimat: The Return of History as Film, Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1989. Preface pp.ix-xiii, Chapter 1: Images of History pp.3-35. 
  • Richard W. McCormick, “From "Caligari" to Dietrich: Sexual, Social, and Cinematic Discourses in Weimar Film” in Signs, Vol. 18, No. 3, Spring, 1993, pp. 640-668) 
EXTRA

Links: 

Watch in Public Domain Review
Week 2
September 20, 2011
1930s Sound Cinema

The Blue Angel (dir. Josef von Sternberg, 1930)
Cabaret, (dir. Bob Fosse, 1972) excerpts
​
READINGS: 
  • Elisabeth Bronfen, “Seductive Departures of Marlene Dietrich: Exile and Stardom in The Blue Angel,” New German Critique, No. 89, Film and Exile, Spring - Summer, 2003, pp. 9-31​
​
Week ​3
September 27, 2011
1940s Rubble Films

The Murderers are Among Us (dir. Wolfgang Staudte, 1946)
Anonyma: A Woman in Berlin (dir. Max Farbeböck, 2008)

READINGS:
  • Robert Shandley, Rubble Films: German Cinema In Shadow Of Third Reich, Temple University Press, 2010
Week 4
October 4, 2011
1950s Economic Miracles

BDR Trilogy (dir. Rainer Werner Fassbinder, 1980-82)

READINGS:
  • Howard Feinstein, “BDR 1-2-3: Fassbinder's Postwar Trilogy and the Spectacle,” Cinema Journal, Vol. 23, No. 1, Autumn, 1983, pp. 44-56
  • Thomas Elsaesser, “Primary Identification and the Historical Subject: Fassbinder and Germany,” Cinetracts, No.11, Fall 1980, pp.43-52​
Week 5
October 11, 2011
1960s and 70s East German Cinema

The Trace of Stones (dir. Frank Beyer, 1966) 
The Legend of Paul and Paula (dir. Heiner Carow, 1973) 

​READINGS:
  • Joshua Feinstei, “Constructing the Mythic Present in the East German Cinema: Frank Beyer's Spur der Steine and the 11th Plenum of 1965,” Central European History, Vol. 32, No. 2, 1999, pp. 203-220
  • Irene Dölling, “We All Love Paula but Paul Is More Important to Us: Constructing a Socialist Person Using the Femininity of a Working Woman,” New German Critique, No. 82, East German Film, Winter, 2001, pp. 77-90​
Week 6
October 18, 2011
1970s West German Terrorism
​
Mother Küsters Goes to Heaven (dir. Rainer Werner Fassbinder, 1975)
The Third Generation (dir. Rainer Werner Fassbinder, 1979)  
Baader-Meinhof Complex (dir. Uli Edel, 2008)

READINGS:
  • Paul Thomas, “Fassbinder: The Poetry of the Inarticulate,” Film Quarterly, Vol. 30, No. 2, Winter, 1976-1977, pp. 2-17 
Week 7
October 25, 2011
1980s STASI

The Lives of Others (dir. Florian Henkel von Donnersmarck, 2006) 

READINGS:
  • Matthew H. Bernstein, “The Lives of Others,” Film Quarterly, Vol. 61, No. 1, Fall 2007, pp. 30-36
  • Jaimey Fisher, “German Historical Film as Production Trend: European Heritage Cinema and Melodrama in The Lives of Others” in The Collapse of the Conventional: German Film and Its Politics at the turn of the Twenty-First Century, ed. by Jaimey Fisher and Brad Prager, Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 2010, pp.186-215
Week 8
November 1, 2011
1980s Punk Culture

Christiane F. (dir. Uli Edel, 1981) 
Wings of Desire ​(dir. Wim Wenders, 1989)

READINGS:
  • Nathan Wolfson, “PoMo Desire?” 
  • Ira Paneth, “Wim and His Wings,” Film Quarterly, Vol. 42, No. 1, Autumn, 1988, pp. 2-8
Week 9 
November 8, 2011
1990s Reunification

Run Lola Run (dir. Tom Tykwer, 1998) 
Goodbye Lenin! (dir. Wolfgang Becker, 2003) 
Russendisko (dir. Oliver Ziegenbalg, 2012) 

READINGS:
  • Eric Rentschler, “From New German Cinema to the Post-Wall Cinema of Consensus,” in Cinema and Nation, ed. by Mette Hjort and Scott MacKenzie, London: Routledge, 2000, pp.260-277
  • Susan Ingram, “Running on Empty: Berlin as a Chronotope of Persistence in Run Lola Run,” Floodgates: Technologies, Cultural (Ex)Change and the Persistence of Place. Ed. Susan Ingram, Markus Reisenleitner and Cornelia Szabó-Knotik. Frankfurt: Peter Lang, 2006, 133-48
  • Clarke, David. “In search of home: filming post-unification Berlin,” in German Cinema Since Unification, Ed. by David Clarke. London: Continuum, 2006, pp.151-180
​Week 10
November 15, 2011
2000s Activism

What to do in Case of Fire (Gregor Schnitzler, 2002) ​
The Edukators (dir. Hans Weingartner, 2004)
​
Week 11 
November 22, 2011​
Multiculturalism

Soul Kitchen  (dir. Fatih Akin, 2010)

READINGS:
  • Noah Isenberg, “Fatih Akin's Cinema of Intersections,” in Film Quarterly, Vol. 64, No. 4, Summer 2011, pp. 53-61
Week 12
November 28, 2011
Conclusion

In the Fade  (dir. Fatih Akin, 2017)

Course Assignments: 

Picture
For each class, students will be asked to keep a detailed film journal and take notes during and after the film screenings, in order to contribute to class discussions. 
A copy of the journal entry is to be submitted after each screening (in electronic format). 
For a sample journal format, please see the handout below:  
Film Journal
File Size: 174 kb
File Type: pdf
Download File

Bibliography: 

Thomas Elsaesser, New German Cinema: A History. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1989.
Thomas Elsaesser, Fassbinder’s Germany. History Identity Subject. Amsterdam University Press, 1996.
Christian Braad Thomsen, Fassbinder: The Life and Work of a Provocative Genius. Transl. by Martin Chalmers, London: Faber and Faber, 1997.
Michael Töteberg and Leo A. Lensing, eds. The Anarchy of the Imagination. Interviews, Essays, Notes. Rainer Werner Fassbinder. Transl. by Krishna Winston, Baltimore: The John Hopkins University Press, 1992.
Juliane Lorenz, ed. Chaos as Usual: Conversations about Rainer Werner Fassbinder. Transl by Christa Armstrong, New York: Applause, 1997.
Robert C. Reimer, Reinhard Zachau, German Culture Through Film: An Introduction to German Cinema. Newburyport, MA: Focus Publishing, 2005.
Jaimey Fisher and Brad Prager, The Collapse of the Conventional: German Film and Its Politics at the turn of the Twenty-First Century. Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 2010.
Wim Wenders, On Film. London: Faber and Faber, 2001. (“The urban Landscape from the point of view of images” pp.375-383, “Find myself a city to live in” pp.384-402)
Stephan K. Schindler and Lutz Koepnick, eds, Introduction, The Cosmopolitan Screen: German Cinema and the Global Imaginary, 1945 to the Present. Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press, 2007, pp. 1-21.
Grant P. McAlliste, Romantic Imagery in Tykwer's "Lola rennt," in German Studies Review, Vol. 30, No. 2 (May, 2007), pp. 331-348.
Muriel Cormican, Goodbye Wenders: "Lola rennt" as German Film Manifesto, in German Studies Review, Vol. 30, No. 1 (Feb., 2007), pp. 121-140.
Stephen Brockmann, A Critical History of German Film. New York: Camden House, 2010.  
Patricia Erens, Issues in Feminist Film Criticism (1990)
Disclaimer: The contents of this site are copy-right protected and cannot be reproduced without the author's permission. © Katrina Sark, 2015.