German Cinema in the Age of Neoliberalism

Hester Baer

book: German Cinema in the Age of Neoliberalism

Open Access Published by Amsterdam University Press 2021

German Cinema in the Age of Neoliberalism

Hester Baer

In the series Film Culture in Transition

https://doi.org/10.1515/9789048551958

Overview
Contents

About this book

This book presents a new history of German film from 1980-2010, a period that witnessed rapid transformations, including intensified globalization, a restructured world economy, geopolitical realignment, and technological change, all of which have affected cinema in fundamental ways. Rethinking the conventional periodization of German film history, Baer posits 1980-rather than 1989-as a crucial turning point for German cinema's embrace of a new market orientation and move away from the state-sponsored film culture that characterized both DEFA and the New German Cinema. Reading films from East, West, and post-unification Germany together, Baer argues that contemporary German cinema is characterized most strongly by its origins in and responses to advanced capitalism. Informed by a feminist approach and in dialogue with prominent theories of contemporary film, the book places a special focus on how German films make visible the neoliberal recasting of gender and national identities around the new millennium.

Author / Editor information

Baer Hester :

Hester Baer is Associate Professor of German and Cinema and Media Studies at the University of Maryland, College Park. She is the author of Dismantling the Dream Factory: Gender, German Cinema, and the Postwar Quest for a New Film Language. She currently serves as co-editor of the journal Feminist German Studies.

Reviews

"It is [a] synthesis of cultural and textual analysis that gives German Cinema in the Age of Neoliberalism its heft, never reducing the films in its scope to purely personal creations of their makers nor as automated cultural products, but as ambiguous texts and commercial objects that are always revealing, whether deliberately or inadvertently, evidence of a perpetually shifting social and economic landscape. [...] Baer takes a complex intersection of politics and culture and renders a convincing and comprehensive history."
- Adam Cook, EuropeNow, special feature on European Culture and the Moving Image (2021)

"This book theorizes neoliberalism beyond a reductive sole emphasis on economics. Instead, it convincingly demonstrates the gendering of neoliberalism through the reading of key films illuminating German cinema with robust, sophisticated, and in-depth scholarship."
- Barbara Mennel, Rothman Chair and Professor of German Studies and Film Studies, University of Florida

"This book provides an original and bold way to rethink German film history since the 1980s. Baer’s comparative close readings, which pair films often not thought of in the same context, are provocative and eye-opening, challenging traditional wisdom and producing fresh insights where observers may have thought that all has been said. This is revisionist film history at its best."
- Gerd Gemünden, Sherman Fairchild Professor of the Humanities, Dartmouth College

"As such, this book represents an extraordinary achievement. It is written in a lucid, compelling prose that vivifies the stakes underpinning the films discussed and brings coherence to complex entanglements of economics, politics, and aesthetics, while also demonstrating that no analysis is complete without a consideration of gender. The volume not only helps us rethink German cinema; it also raises the bar for how we approach the work of thinking and writing about it."
- Angelica Fenner, The German Quarterly, Summer 2022

Topics

Frontmatter Open Access Download PDF	1
Table of Contents Open Access Download PDF	5
Acknowledgements Open Access Download PDF	7
Introduction: Making Neoliberalism Visible Open Access Download PDF	11
1. German Cinema and the Neoliberal Turn : The End of the National-Cultural Film Project Open Access Download PDF	43
2. Producing German Cinema for the World : Global Blockbusters from Location Germany Open Access Download PDF	77
3. From Everyday Life to the Crisis Ordinary : Films of Ordinary Life and the Resonance of DEFA Open Access Download PDF	129
4. Future Feminism : Political Filmmaking and the Resonance of the West German Feminist Film Movement Open Access Download PDF	157
5. The Failing Family: Changing Constellations of Gender, Intimacy, and Genre Open Access Download PDF	193
6. Refiguring National Cinema in Films about Labour, Money, and Debt Open Access Download PDF	243
Conclusion: German Cinema in the Age of Neoliberalism Open Access Download PDF	291
Bibliography Open Access Download PDF	295
Index Open Access Download PDF	311

(Deutsch)

Language: English
Publisher: Amsterdam University Press
Audience: Professional and scholarly;
Pages
- Main content: 320
Illustrations
- Illustrations: 20
Keywords: German film; neoliberalism; economic change; feminism; national cinema

eBook

Published: March 11, 2021
ISBN: 9789048551958