VSA4640

German cinema

Leonie Naughton

10 points
* Second semester
* Clayton
* Prerequisites: VSA2190/VSA3190 Forms of narrative cinema

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 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. Students will be required to take an examination in addition to the assessment of two essays. In that examination they will be required to demonstrate more extensive reading and a capacity to synthesise their knowledge on a high level. In their essays they will be required to demonstrate more extensive reading and a capacity to synthesise their knowledge on a high level.

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. In preparing their essays, fourth-year students will be required to read more extensively and deal with more challenging readings than third-year students. Students will also be expected to extend the critical, analytical and interpretive skills acquired in earlier years of film study.

Prescribed texts

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