GERM 3560

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GERM 3560

• New German Cinema

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Situation after the war

• Germany left completely ruined
• Allied control of production
• West
• decartelisation (break up of UFA)
• East
• Centralisation -DEFA

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Trümmerfilme

• Influence of Italian Neorealism
• introverted self scrutiny

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1950s

• Host of small production companies licensed
  chasing the same money
• Hollywood reruns by 1951 200 American films
  annually
• No Stunde Null in German filmmaking 40 of
  directors active during NS

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1950s

• Two Major Production Strands
• Heimatfilme
• Pornography

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Emergence of the New German Cinema

• 1961- death of German cinema
• no Federal film prize awarded
• 1962 Oberhausen Manifesto
• Key issue
• German film must be funded.
• Must be about aesthetics not commercial success.

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Emergence of the New German Cinema

• 1965 Kuratorium Junger Deutscher Film
• Young German Film
• Alexander Kluge/Werner Herzog/ Edgar Reitz
• Low budget
• Importance of Film Schools

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Emergence of the New German Cinema

• Opa-kino strikes back
• New film crisis
• 1971 Filmverlag der Autoren in set up
• Using Television and other public funding
• Alexander Kluge/Wim Wenders/Edgar Reitz and
  Rainer Werner Fassbinder

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Effects of funding system

• No need to raise capital on the open market
• More artistic freedom, yet also dependence on
  whims of governments and prize juries
• Low production values
• capital cannot be recouped at the box office

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Effects of funding system

• Changes to Filmförderunganstalt
• less good for New German Cinema (rewards
  previous success)
• Since 1983 more commercial
• State prizes and regional first-film subsidies

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Autorenkino

• Filmmakers as authors
• Sensibilist cinema
• Romanticism national, irrational, metaphysical
• Government policy filmmaking as Kultur (Kultur
  and national identity)
• Influence of filmmakers in political and cultural
  debates

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Television

• Alternative distribution network
• TV production made integral to various film
  subsidies bills
• Public service function of TV form and content
  of politcally-engaged films
• Smaller productions
• Team-working women directors
• Less reliance on special effects
• Cross-over between TV and filmmaking
• Later adopted in other countries (C4)

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Some Themes

• The effects of the Nazi period on postwar German
  society
• The Student Movement and the legacy of 1968

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Some Themes

• Relationship to American culture

Wim Wenders Kings of the Road The Yanks have
colonised our subconscious.
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Aesthetics

• Avant-garde?
• Hollywood Conventions?

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Reception

• Failure at Home/success abroad
• Who were the films made for?
• Status of the filmmaker?
• Relationship to the state?
• Relationship to television?
• What sort of films were these?