Abstract

Since the fall of the Berlin Wall, there has been a proliferation of German historical films. These productions have earned prestigious awards and succeeded at box offices both at home and abroad, where they count among the most popular German films of all time. Recently, however, the country’s cinematic take on history has seen a significant new development: the radical style, content, and politics of the New German Cinema. With in-depth analyses of the major trends and films, this book represents a comprehensive assessment of the historical film in today’s Germany. Challenging previous paradigms, it takes account of a postwall cinema that complexly engages with various historiographical forms and, above all, with film history itself.

Mattias Frey is a Reader in Film Studies at the University of Kent. His research revolves around historical filmmaking, arthouse cinema cultures, film criticism and theory, as well as German and Austrian media. His books include Cine-Ethics: Ethical Dimensions of Film Theory, Practice, and Spectatorship; The Permanent Crisis of Film Criticism: The Anxiety of Authority; Film Criticism in the Digital Age; and Extreme Cinema: The Transgressive Rhetoric of Today's Art Film Culture.

 “…a highly inspirational and very readable book.”  ·  H-Soz-u-Kult

“…his highly original contribution to historiography reconsiders the ‘historical turn’ in recent German cinema, framing it as also indicative of a cinephilic reworking of the history of the cinema, effectively remediating previous filmic representations of history.”  ·  Seminar: A Journal of Germanic Studies

"This book will make an important contribution to the growing body of literature on contemporary German film. The discussion of Das Wunder von Bern, Baader and Die Unberührbare in particular stands out."  ·  Paul Cooke, University of Leeds