VSA3630

German cinema

Leonie Naughton

8 points - 4 hours per week - First semester - Clayton - Prerequisites: VSA2190, two visual culture subjects or at discretion of head of department

Objectives By the completion of this subject students are expected to be able to demonstrate a familiarity with various New German films and an awareness of events surrounding this cinema's emergence and efflorescence; an understanding of how filmmaking practices differed in the German Democratic and Federal Republics of Germany; an awareness of the textual operations of films screened during the subject and how they may be related to psychoanalytic theory and debates about spectacle, genre, historical recovery, feminism; an ability to present rigorous close analyses of specific film texts. Students will be required to critically engage with written and filmic texts in a clear and confident manner in both written and oral presentation.

Synopsis The postwar German cinema, most notably of the 1980s and 1990s, will provide the subject with its central emphasis. The relationship between film culture and the state will be examined with reference to issues revolving around the construction of 'national identity' and to theoretical proposals which have sought to establish links between the so-called collective psyche and national film produce. Provocative questions regarding the representation of history (in particular of Nazism and the division of Germany) and of sexuality will be raised by the new German films to be screened. Throughout the subject the works of postwar Autoren such as Fassbinder and Wenders and feminist filmmakers will be analysed. The impact of unification on German film culture will be examined. The subject will survey film making practices in the ex-GDR. Critical insight will be given into the representation of unification and German-German relations in contemporary film. Although aspects of German film history will be surveyed, students are not required to have a background in German history to undertake this subject.

Assessment Two essays (2500 words each): 80% - Examination (1 hour): 20%

Prescribed texts

Elsaesser T New German cinema: A history Macmillan, 1989
Rentschler E West German film in the course of time Redgrave, 1984

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