Offers a fresh approach to German film studies by tracing key genres -- including horror, the thriller, Heimat films, and war films -- over the course of German cinema history

This book tells the story of German-language literature on film, beginning with pioneering motion picture adaptations of Faust in 1897 and early debates focused on high art as mass culture. It explores, analyzes and contextualizes the so-called 'golden age' of silent cinema in the 1920s, the impact of sound on adaptation practices, the abuse of literary heritage by Nazi filmmakers, and traces the role of German-language literature in exile and postwar films, across ideological boundaries in divided Germany, in New German Cinema, and in remakes and movies for cinema as well as television and streaming services in the 21st century. Having provided the narrative core to thousands of films since the late 19th century, many of German cinema's most influential masterpieces were inspired by canonical texts, popular plays, and even children's literature. Not being restricted to German adaptations, however, this book also traces the role of literature originally written in German in international film productions, which sheds light on the interrelation between cinema and key historical events. It outlines how processes of adaptation are shaped by global catastrophes and the emergence of nations, by materialist conditions, liberal economies and capitalist imperatives, political agendas, the mobility of individuals, and sometimes by the desire to create reflective surfaces and, perhaps, even art. Commercial cinema's adaptation practices have foregrounded economic interest, but numerous filmmakers throughout cinema history have turned to German-language literature not simply to entertain, but as a creative contribution to the public sphere, marking adaptation practice, at least potentially, as a form of active citizenship.

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.

In this book, William Mahan analyzes German feature films and TV series centered around the figure of the computer hacker as a hero over the past twenty-five years. The author introduces the German hacker genre to the ongoing academic discussion of genre in German cinema and argues for its continued relevance in both national and global contexts.

German Ways of War explores the production of novel spaces and evocation of new affects in the war-film genre between the 1910s and 2000s. Beyond the conventional pairing of visuality and violence, war films combine mobility, landscape, territory, scales, and topological networks into "affective geographies" that interweave narratively-generated affect, space, and political processes.

Contributors explore these films' transnational circuits of production, distribution, and exhibition, as well as how the films were made and received, thereby inviting us to reexamine the roots of what New German Cinema was and imagine what it might yet become.

"From its beginnings, some of German film's most prominent genres and directors have focused on the natural world and its transformations by humans. Heimat films, "city symphonies," mountain films, and rubble films all blend the boundary between landscape documentary and fiction film. Yet German film studies has been slow to adopt an environmental focus, concentrating (understandably) on its subject matter's political implications. This book reveals critical connections between German film, sociopolitical context, and environment, showing it to have been a creative catalyst for the social and ecological transformation of the Anthropocene. The book first considers the interplay between German film and environmental history in films and discourses of Heimat. Weimar-era films such as E. A. Dupont's Die Geierwally (1921), Carl Ludwig Achaz-Duisberg's Sprengbagger 1010 (1929), and Phil Jèutzi's Hunger in Waldenburg (1929) document and create a forum for discussing environmental change. The book then looks at film as a visual archive of and catalyst for infrastructure development, focusing on Metropolis (Fritz Lang, 1927), the mountain films of Arnold Fanck, and the Berlin films Stadt der Millionen (Adolf Trotz, 1925), Berlin: Die Sinfonie der Grossstadt (Walter Ruttmann, 1927), and Menschen am Sonntag (1930). Nazi-era and postwar films are also examined. By exploring German film history alongside environmental history and theory, this book provides a case study of the power of film within processes of environmental transformation"--

German Popular Cinema and the Rialto Krimi Phenomenon: Dark Eyes of London examines the Kriminalfilme—or Krimis—based on the novels of English author Edgar Wallace, released by Rialto Film between 1959 and 1972 as part of the post-World War II era of German popular cinema that enjoyed extraordinary popularity with the German public. Nicholas G. Schlegel analyzes how this group of West German thrillers not only nurtured a convalescing film industry, but also provided unequaled national entertainment while canonizing Rialto’s Krimi productions in terms of their historical genesis, aesthetic characteristics, and social reception. Schlegel surveys the Krimi’s enduring legacy, calculable global influence, inevitable decline, and eventual migration to television in the 1970s, where it thrived but ultimately took on a more somber tone. Scholars of film, television, history, and German culture will find this book particularly useful.

The first scholarly collection in English or German to fully address the treatment of gender and sexuality in the productions of DEFA across genres and in social, political, and cultural context.

A dynamic, event-centered exploration of the hundred-year history of German-language film. This dynamic, event-centered anthology offers a new understanding of the hundred-year history of German-language film, from the earliest days of the Kintopp to contemporary productions like The Lives of Others. Eachof the more than eighty essays takes a key date as its starting point and explores its significance for German film history, pursuing its relationship with its social, political, and aesthetic moment. While the essays offer ampletemporal and topical spread, this book emphasizes the juxtaposition of famous and unknown stories, granting attention to a wide range of cinematic events. Brief section introductions provide a larger historical and film-historicalframework that illuminates the essays within it, offering both scholars and the general reader a setting for the individual texts and figures under investigation. Cross-references to other essays in the book are included at the close of each entry, encouraging readers not only to pursue familiar trajectories in the development of German film, but also to trace particular figures and motifs across genres and historical periods. Together, the contributionsoffer a new view of the multiple, intersecting narratives that make up German-language cinema. The constellation that is thus established challenges unidirectional narratives of German film history and charts new ways of thinkingabout film historiography more broadly. Jennifer Kapczynski is Associate Professor of German at Washington University, St. Louis, and Michael Richardson is Associate Professor of German at Ithaca College.