German Cinema Book

This comprehensively revised, updated and significantly extended edition introduces German film history from its beginnings to the present day, covering key periods and movements including early and silent cinema, Weimar cinema, Nazi cinema, the New German Cinema, the Berlin School, the cinema of migration, and moving images in the digital era. Contributions by leading international scholars are grouped into sections that focus on genre; stars; authorship; film production, distribution and exhibition; theory and politics, including women’s and queer cinema; and transnational connections. Spotlight articles within each section offer key case studies, including of individual films that illuminate larger histories (Heimat, Downfall, The Lives of Others, The Edge of Heaven and many more); stars from Ossi Oswalda and Hans Albers, to Hanna Schygulla and Nina Hoss; directors including F.W. Murnau, Walter Ruttmann, Wim Wenders and Helke Sander; and film theorists including Siegfried Kracauer and Béla Balázs. The volume provides a methodological template for the study of a national cinema in a transnational horizon.

[T]his book will be a great help in deepening the history of German film and its present.

Tim Bergfelder is Professor of Film at the University of Southampton, UK.Erica Carter is Professor of German and Film Studies at King's College London, UK and founding Chair of the German Screen Studies Network.Deniz Göktürk is Professor of German Studies, Film and Media at the University of California, Berkeley, USA.Claudia Sandberg is a Senior Lecturer in the School of Languages and Linguistics at the University of Melbourne, Australia.