VSA4640

German screen studies

Leonie Naughton

10 points - First semester - Clayton - Prerequisites: VSA2190/VSA3190 Forms of narrative cinema - Prohibitions: VSA3630

Objectives By the completion of this subject students are expected to be able to demonstrate a familiarity with some 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, and feminism; and 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 This subject examines trends in recent German film and television production in particular popular German film (the sex/Wohngemeinschaft comedies of the 1990s) and art cinema of the 1970s and 1980s. The works of various Autoren and feminist filmmaking practices will be discussed. Films screened will be examined in relation to the socio-political and cultural contexts out of which they emerged. The impact of German unification of film culture will be examined along with distinctions between film culture in the former Democratic and Federal Republics. Aspects of German film history and German film movements will be discussed, although students are not required to have a backgound in German history to undertake this subject.

Assessment Two essays (3000 words each): 80% - Examination (1 hour): 20% - Students undertaking the subject as a fourth-year subject will be required to undertake more rigorous research and display a capacity to synthesise their knowledge on a higher level than third-year students.

Prescribed texts

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

Back to the 1999 Arts Handbook