Germany in Postwar Cinema

(3 Credit Hours) · Undergraduate

What does it mean to be a successor state to the Nazis? Can one live in hope, and yet still take honest account of a genocidal past? How might cinema be deployed to bring about the elusive Communist utopia, a true democracy; or, conversely, how could it figure as a means to protest an authoritarian government or decry oppressive social conditions? These are questions posed not only by postwar Germans--in the East and West--but by people the world over. Yet the particular "German" contexts of the two Cold War states and now of the Berlin Republic are unmistakable and continue to exert a particular fascination for filmmakers from around the world. This course will treat a dozen great films that attempt to record history, make history, and sometimes even defy history. We will treat film not merely as a reflection of politics, but as a potential intervention that may still be relevant to contemporaries. Directors include: Wim Wenders, Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Margarethe von Trotta, Volker Schlöndorff, Billy Wilder, and others