No description available.

The film <em>Der Untergang</em> (2004), directed by Oliver HIRSCHBIEGEL and written and produced by Bernd EICHINGER, is based on Joachim FEST's historical monograph <em>Der Untergang</em> (2002) and Traudl JUNGE's and Melissa M??LLER's <em>Bis zur letzten Stunde</em> (2003). Taking place in April, 1945, the movie depicts the last days of Adolf Hitler and his staff in the 'F??hrerbunker'. The appearance of the film sparked wide-spread controversy concerning the propriety of Germans illuminating this most controversial aspect of their history. Specifically, the debate centred on the historical accuracy of the film and the dangers associated with the filmmakers' goal of portraying Hitler not as a caricature or one-sided figure but rather as a complete human being whose troubles and human qualities might well earn the sympathy of the viewers. <br /><br /> After surveying a variety of films that portray Adolf Hitler, the thesis analyses <em>Der Untergang</em> by focusing first on the cinematic and narrative aspects of the film itself and then on the figure of Hitler. It aims to demonstrate that the presentation of Hitler as a complex character reflects the circumstances of the film's time and culture. In particular, this thesis discusses two main aspects: first, it describes a figure of Hitler constructed in the film and conveyed to the viewers; second, it demonstrates that the film's construction of Hitler is embedded in the sociocultural context of the film's creation, thereby establishing that this is a Hitler for contemporary German society and the current state of German culture's reckoning with its fascist past. <br /><br /> The results of the analysis, in particular the depiction of Hitler and the representation of death and suicide, demonstrate that the film presents a multiple point of view. The film also faces the problematic issue of representing history adequately. The consideration of the German sociocultural context brings up some reasons that can explain the increased interest in the personal side of the perpetrators and especially in the figure of Hitler. <br /><br /> Finally, this thesis maintains that <em>Der Untergang</em> gives a complex but subsequently inconsistent picture of Adolf Hitler because it gets entangled by the attempt to be informative and entertaining at the same time. Though the film cannot replace historical investigation and analysis, it still informs Germans about Adolf Hitler and reflects how their society deals with its own troubled past.

This screenplay dramatizes the controversial career of German film maker Leni Riefenstahl during ten years of her association with the Nazi Party. Beginning with the premiere of her first film in 1932, this account chronicles her rise as a film director of such films as Triumph of the Will and Olympia to her arrest after World War II on charges that she had been a Nazi sympathizer. Besides delineating the character and talents of Leni Riefenstahl, this screenplay addresses the difficult question of the relationship between politics and art.

The film <em>Der Untergang</em> (2004), directed by Oliver HIRSCHBIEGEL and written and produced by Bernd EICHINGER, is based on Joachim FEST's historical monograph <em>Der Untergang</em> (2002) and Traudl JUNGE's and Melissa MÜLLER's <em>Bis zur letzten Stunde</em> (2003). Taking place in April, 1945, the movie depicts the last days of Adolf Hitler and his staff in the 'Führerbunker'. The appearance of the film sparked wide-spread controversy concerning the propriety of Germans illuminating this most controversial aspect of their history. Specifically, the debate centred on the historical accuracy of the film and the dangers associated with the filmmakers' goal of portraying Hitler not as a caricature or one-sided figure but rather as a complete human being whose troubles and human qualities might well earn the sympathy of the viewers. <br /><br /> After surveying a variety of films that portray Adolf Hitler, the thesis analyses <em>Der Untergang</em> by focusing first on the cinematic and narrative aspects of the film itself and then on the figure of Hitler. It aims to demonstrate that the presentation of Hitler as a complex character reflects the circumstances of the film's time and culture. In particular, this thesis discusses two main aspects: first, it describes a figure of Hitler constructed in the film and conveyed to the viewers; second, it demonstrates that the film's construction of Hitler is embedded in the sociocultural context of the film's creation, thereby establishing that this is a Hitler for contemporary German society and the current state of German culture's reckoning with its fascist past. <br /><br /> The results of the analysis, in particular the depiction of Hitler and the representation of death and suicide, demonstrate that the film presents a multiple point of view. The film also faces the problematic issue of representing history adequately. The consideration of the German sociocultural context brings up some reasons that can explain the increased interest in the personal side of the perpetrators and especially in the figure of Hitler. <br /><br /> Finally, this thesis maintains that <em>Der Untergang</em> gives a complex but subsequently inconsistent picture of Adolf Hitler because it gets entangled by the attempt to be informative and entertaining at the same time. Though the film cannot replace historical investigation and analysis, it still informs Germans about Adolf Hitler and reflects how their society deals with its own troubled past.

<p>This dissertation uses film to explore shifts in conceptions of race, cultural identity, and national belonging in Germany from the 1950s West Germany to contemporary reunified Germany. Through the analysis of several German productions featuring black characters in major narrative or symbolic roles, it identifies narrative and cinematic techniques used to thematize and problematize popular German conceptions of race and racism and to utilize race as a flexible symbolic resource in defining specific identity borders. The dominant discourse around the concept of race and its far-reaching implications has long been impeded by the lack of a critical German vocabulary. This gap in mainstream German language is in large part a consequence of the immutable association between &ldquo;race&rdquo; (in German, <italic>Rasse</italic>) as a term, and the pro-Aryan, anti-Semitic dogma of National Socialist ideology. As Germany struggles to address racism as a specific problem in the process of its ongoing project to rehabilitate national identity in a post-colonial era indelibly marked by the Second World War, the films discussed in this work &mdash; <italic>Toxi</italic> (R.A. Stemmle, 1952), <italic>Gottes zweite Garnitur</italic> (P. Verhoeven, 1967), <italic>Angst essen Seele auf</italic> (R.W. Fassbinder, 1974), <italic>Die Ehe der Maria Braun</italic> (R.W. Fassbinder, 1979), <italic>Alles wird gut</italic> (Maccarone, 1998) and <italic>Tal der Ahnungslosen</italic> (Okpako, 2003) &mdash; provide evidence of attempts to create counter-discourses within the space of this language gap.</p><p>Using approaches based primarily in critical race and film studies, the following work argues that these films' depictions of racism and racial conflict are often both confined by and add significant new dimension to definitions of Blackness and of conceptions of race and racism in the German context. These attempts at redefinition reveal the ongoing difficulties Germany has faced when confronting the social and ideological structures that are the legacy of its colonialist and National Socialist history. More importantly, however, the films help us to retrace and recover Germany's history of resistance to that legacy and expand the imaginative possibilities for creating coalitions capable of affecting social change.</p> / Dissertation

Swiss-German director Dani Levy uses humor to explore recent German history in his films "Alles auf Zucker" (2004) and "Mein Führer: Die wirklich wahrste Wahrheit über Adolf Hitler" (2007). In a move unusual for German-speaking film directors, Levy pokes fun at Adolf Hitler and his regime in "Mein Führer." Levy also plays with the tension among formerly estranged members of a Jewish family in "Alles auf Zucker" to create a metaphor for the strained relations in reunified Germany.This project explores how Levy uses humor to break taboos in contemporary German society and prompt audiences through humor to critical debate about recent German history and its implications for contemporary and future society. This analysis is important to the German-speaking world and global audiences because Levy's work begs viewers to ponder what they can laugh at, who is allowed to make jokes, and how comedy can promote debate about societal norms and taboos.

To date, the subject of disability has been highly disregarded in Germany’s academia. In the field of Arts, the topic is a derivative. This thesis makes a contribution to the discipline of Disability Studies and approaches the problematic from the field of German Studies. The analysis focuses on the sensory disabilities deafness and blindness and its depiction in the movies Jenseits der Stille und Erbsen auf Halb Sechs. The goal of this paper is to attract notice to the ways of representation of disability in German media in general. On the one hand, film reflects generally accepted public attitudes. But since film is a mass media, it has the potency to alter and question the communal opinion on the other hand. Thus, it can change society’s mindset about people with disability. Furthermore, this paper points out the different starting points for further liberal arts oriented approaches for investigations of disability in the media. However, the film analysis is based on two theses. The first one claims that the focus in the representation of people with disability does not concentrate on the human beings. On the contrary, it rather concentrates on the disability itself and the consequences that spring of it. The second thesis pursues this thought and says that the movies not only focus on the depiction of disability. In fact the disabled figures define themselves by their handicap and, in return, are defined by their physical aberrance by their social surroundings, which is foremost not disabled. Thereby, the disability forms an almost insuperable interpersonal obstacle. The analysis of the two movies is done along three research questions. The first one concerns the connection of physical handicap and the way people with disability think and act in relation to their surroundings and life in general. The second question is what factors, like gender, social class, or age, are crucial in self- and external perception, and therefore, in the formation of identity. The last investigation concentrates on the special abilities of people with disability, and scrutinizes if the aptitudes serve as compensations for their disabilities. The basis of this paper is Michel Foucault’s theory of mechanisms of societal exclusion, and the construction of categories such as norm and abnormity. Especially his works Wahnsinn und Gesellschaft, Überwachen und Strafen and his lecture course of Die Anormalen are essential in this perspective. In addition, the cultural and social currents in the disability studies serve as fundamental approaches. These two theories help to identify the vague term disability, and consequently, the object of investigation in this paper. In summary, the analysis of Jenseits der Stille and Erbsen auf Halb Sechs shows that the representation of disabled people in German film is predominantly stereotypic. Therein, disablement means great misfortune, and the loss of the central position in discourse. The disabled figures are socially alienated from their non-disabled surroundings. The isolation, however, is brought about by discursive mechanisms such as the power of medicine. In both movies, the disabled and non-disabled people are focused on the disability in their self and external perception. Accordingly, disability is linked to the feeling of shame, a lack of acceptance and the stigmatization of deviants. Self-acceptance can only be accomplished outside of the discourse of the normal, in which disabled are stigmatized. This paper reveals that the representation of people with disability in German film still shows a rather stereotypic image. Therefore, they tend to confirm societal prejudices rather than to challenge them.

No description available.

In my dissertation, I discuss three of Akın’s feature films: Im Juli (In July, 2000), Gegen die Wand (Head-On, 2004), and Auf der anderen Seite (The Edge of Heaven, 2007) in order to investigate Akın’s filmic visions of Europe. Through close textual readings, I analyze three aspects of his films in particular: the spatial conceptions of Europe (city- and landscapes), the sounds of Europe (music and languages) as well as the display of ethnic minorities and the changing urban demography in Germany and Europe. I argue that Akın employs an “aesthetic of heterogeneity” to portray his filmic Europe as a diverse space, in which multiethnic and multilingual music, people, and sceneries are juxtaposed with regions that often have been perceived historically and politically as distinct and complicated. My first chapter discusses Akın’s conceptions and depictions of European Space in In July. By analyzing city- and landscapes, soundscapes, and dynamic spaces in In July, I argue that Akın provides a dynamic, fluctuating, and interconnected European space, including Eastern Europe and Turkey. In my second chapter, I scrutinize language use and dialogue in Head-On to map out the changing demographics in European urban spaces. Ultimately, I argue that Akın moves beyond Hamid Naficy’s theory of “accented cinema” by including accented languages and dialects for all protagonists, including Western Europeans. Through this linguistic polyphony, multilingualism and a diversity of accents are depicted as integral elements of today’s Europe. In my final chapter, I discuss the sound of Europe as depicted in The Edge of Heaven. Looking particularly at music (and music lyrics) in the film, I argue that Akın’s use of dubbed and remixed music (especially by the artist Shantel) underscores Akın’s filmic challenges to (national) European borders. By foregrounding the mixed styles of music, where an “original” becomes hard to decipher, the director shows, on an aural level, that blurring boundaries and multidirectional movement are the predominant components of today’s Europe. / text

Im sechsten Band der Reihe Pri ha-Pardes untersucht Ulrike Heikaus die deutschsprachigen Filme, die zwischen 1933 und 1945 aus Mitteleuropa nach Palästina importiert und einer breiten Öffentlichkeit vorgeführt wurden. Im Mittelpunkt der Analyse steht die Bedeutung und Repräsentation dieser deutschsprachigen Filme in der palästinensischen Filmkultur, ihre Wahrnehmung und Rezeption, vor allem durch die deutschsprachigen Einwanderer selbst. Mehr als zweihundert deutschsprachige Filme wurden in den palästinensischen Kinotheatern während der Jahre 1930 bis 1945 in Palästina zum Teil über Jahre hinweg regelmäßig aufgeführt. Doch wie sehr waren diese Filme tatsächlich in der hebräischsprachigen Öffentlichkeit präsent? Wie wurde für sie geworben? Und wie wurden diese Filme von den deutschsprachigen Einwanderer wahrgenommen? Antworten dazu geben dabei vor allem die in Palästina in den dreißiger und vierziger Jahren erschienenen Zeitungen in deutscher Sprache, die den Neueinwanderern als Mittel zur sozialen Kommunikation und Plattform für gesellschaftliches, kulturelles und soziales Leben zur Verfügung standen. Untersucht werden ferner Materialien israelischer Archive, die über den Aspekt des deutschsprachigen Filmimports und die Vermarktung der Filme im Kontext der frühen Kinokultur im damaligen Palästina Aufschluss geben. / The focus of this study are the numerous German-speaking films, which were imported to Palestine from Europe between 1933 and 1945 and screened for a broad public. The importance and representation of these films for the young film culture of Palestine, their perception and reception, especially by the German-speaking Jews, will be investigated and analysed in this thesis.