New German Cinemas

Born in Oberhausen in 1962, the “New German Cinema” displaced the sclerotic film production of the post-WWII era known as “daddy’s cinema” with the very different cinematic project and idiom of a younger generation of then little-known filmmakers. The rapid canonization of the set of stars that would effectively come to constitute this new film-historical construct –figures such as Werner Herzog, Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Wim Wenders – has allowed the work of other equally important, prolific and contemporary filmmakers such as Alexander Kluge, Ulrike Ottinger, Harun Farocki and Hartmut Bitomsky to remain under-examined. The revisionist implications of their work for our understanding of post-Wirtschaftswunder German cinema as a whole, and New German Cinemas in particular (including newer work by directors of the so-called “Berlin School”) will be the focus of the film series this semester.

The Fall Semester German Department Film Series (shown in conjunction with GER308 “New German Cinemas”) will take place every Tuesday evening at 7:30pm in 010 East Pyne. The series, which is free and Open to the public, features DVD projections of the best available original German language prints with English subtitles. Each screening will begin with a short by an Oberhausen signatory, followed by the feature film and a public discussion.