Studies of German cinema often focus on the historical and political implications of German film. Within this context. students in German 3604 will examine how filmic environments function throughout the turbulent history of German film culture.
Titles include expressionist classics such as The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920) and Metropolis (1927), Weimar-era mountain films and city symphonies, Nazi features such as the propaganda documentaries Eternal Forest (1936) and Olympia (1938), and postwar "rubble films" such as The Murderers Are Among Us (1946). We will examine films from the idyllic Heimat genre of the 1950s, as well as the anti-Heimat films of New German Cinema in the 1960s and 70s. Finally, we will consider recent films that portray, and critique, the notion of a "hybrid Heimat" in a multicultural Germany. Language of instruction is English.