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German cinema is in transition: Since the 1990s, a new, energetic generation
of producers, writers and directors has begun to discover the cinema
as its own form of expression. Their works reach high popularity with
the public already. In 1999, young German director Tom Tykwer’s
Run, Lola, Run, an existentialist drama, became an international box
office smash. Eastern German theater director Leander Haußmann
enjoyed unexpected international acclaim for his film debut Sonnenallee
(Sun Alley), in which he recalled his youth in the GDR in a rather grotesque
way. Oliver Hirschbiegel is another newcomer. His thriller Das Experiment
(The Experiment) recently made it to theaters in the U.S. and was widely
acclaimed by the critics. Another important name on the German film scene
is Turkish-born Fatih Akin. His first full-length feature film, Kurz
und Schmerzlos (Short Sharp Shock) won the Bronze Leopard prize at Locarno
and the Bavarian Film Award (Best Young Director) in 1998. Another film
of his, is Im Juli (In July), out in 2000, was a major success in Germany.
The fresh spark being seen in German film today is reflected in the
fact that in recent years many German film companies have gone public
and that more and more German films are internationally co-produced.
German producers like Bernd Eichinger (Smila´s Sense of Snow and
A Girl Called Rosemarie) and directors Wolfgang Peterson (The Boat, Enemy
Mine, In the Line of Fire and Outbreak) and Roland Emmerich (Universal
Soldier and Independence Day) have successfully established themselves
in Hollywood. So has Germany’s 28-year-old leading lady, Franka
Potente, star of Run, Lola, Run. Potente, who trained in Germany and
the U.S., had her first Hollywood role opposite Johnny Depp in Ted Demme’s
Blow, and gained widespread popularity with audiences in the U.S. this
summer in a major role in The Bourne Identity, co-starring Matt Damon.
Scarcely a movie is made in Germany without at least some public funding – even
major productions are underwritten by government institutions. State
and federal funding is meant to defend film as a cultural asset against
big-budget international competition and to actively promote its development.
Still, national productions are rare in German cinemas. German films
represent just 13.9% of the German movie market this year. During the
first half of 2002, 11 million people in Germany saw German movies, some
1.1 million more than the year before. Light films, such as the comedy
Der Schuh des Manitu (Manitou’s Shoe), the most popular movie in
German film history, attracted the biggest box office share. These films
typically do not garner the same attention in other countries because
their cultural references tend to be very specific and therefore difficult
to translate for non-German audiences.
Development of German Films
In the Weimar Republic, 1918 – 1933
German films have always reflected social and technological changes in
the country. Between 1918 and 1933 movies became the most popular form
of mass media in the short-lived Weimar Republic. Germany was a pioneer
of the new medium and had the most movie houses of any European country
at that time. In the 1920s and 1930s, the famous Babelsberg film studios
just outside Berlin produced more movies than all other European countries
combined. The early silent films produced there set the standard for
the cinema of their day, with expressionistic black-and-white effects
and romantic illusions. The most significant movies of that time were
Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau's Nosferatu (1922) — the earliest surviving
screen adaptation of Bram Stoker's Dracula — and Fritz Lang’s
masterpiece Metropolis (also 1922), the first science-fiction film.
1930s and Postwar
With the invention of “talkies” in the early 1930s, filmmakers
were challenged by new possibilities. Genre films like Der blaue Engel
(Blue Angel) starring Marlene Dietrich from 1930/31 or the comedy Die
drei von der Tankstelle (The Three Guys from the Gas Station) with Heinz
Rühmann are among the most famous of these movies. With the takeover
of the National Socialists, many movies were subject to censorship. The
NSDAP used film and media as part of their propaganda machinery. Many
actors left Germany to work in foreign countries. After 1945, German
movies had an educational character in addition to their entertaining
value: films like Die Mörder sind unter uns (Murderers are among
us) from 1946 – so called Trümmerfilme (films from the ruins) – posed
questions about guilt and morality. They tried to explain the new German
reality. A great number of postwar productions reflect the immediate
social and political situation of the country.
First Festivals and New Genres – 1950 to 1980
In the 1950s, going to the cinema became the number one leisure time
activity in Germany. Most popular were the so-called Heimatfilme (homeland
films), such as Schwarzwaldmädel (Girl from the Black Forest)
from 1950. They showed idyllic German landscapes instead of bombed-out
cities, and were an important way for Germans to escape reality. In
1951, Die Sünderin (Story of a Sinner) provoked the first big
film-scandal in Germany: For the first time in German film history
a naked body was seen on the big screen. In the same year the Federal
Ministry of the Interior awarded outstanding movies with the Deutscher
Filmpreis (German Film Award) and the first International Film Festival
of Berlin, the Berlinale, was held. Today, the Berlinale is one of
the biggest and most prestigious film festivals in the world. There
are more than a hundred film festivals in Germany, covering a wide
spectrum of genres: The short-film festival in Oberhausen, for example,
is famous for identifying young talent. Junior filmmakers who later
went on to great renown, such as Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Werner Herzog
and Wim Wenders, made their public debuts there with short films. Fassbinder,
the most prolific and, many feel, creative of these filmmakers, died
in 1982. His work focused on the oppressed individual and the contradictions
innate in German history, expressing them in a variety of forms and
stories. Borrowing from melodrama, he made major narrative films such
as Die Hochzeit der Maria Braun (The Marriage of Maria Braun) in 1978,
Berlin Alexanderplatz in 1980, and Lola in 1981.
The 1980s
In the 1980s, the filmmakers of the so-called New German Film movement
increasingly enjoyed commercial and international success. In 1979,
Volker Schlöndorff won the “Golden Palm” in Cannes
and in 1980, an Oscar in Hollywood for his film version of Günter
Grass’s novel, The Tin Drum. As the social criticism of the 1968
student-revolt movement waned, discursive films lost their political
backgrounds and were not able to establish a stable economic base that
could withstand the offensive of commercial films.
East Germany
In the German Democratic Republic (GDR), films were produced by the monopolist
company DEFA. It was financed and controlled by the state and subject
to the political interests of the ruling socialist party. After reunification
in 1990, DEFA ceased production. Yet its studios in Babelsberg near
Berlin have managed a quantum leap into the future: Over the past decade
they have worked to establish themselves as one of Europe’s leading
locations for film and television production.
The Top 10 German Films, 1980 to 2001:
Name Genre Year Audience
#1 Manitou’s Shoe Comedy (2001) 10,913,467
#2 Otto – The Movie Comedy (1985) 8,774,933
#3 Der bewegte Mann Comedy (1994) 6,565,342
#4 Otto – The New Movie Comedy (1987) 6,446,375
#5 Never-ending Story Fantasy (1984) 5,448,781
#6 Men Comedy (1985) 5,210,891
#7 Werner II Cartoon (1996) 4,951,385
#8 Werner I Cartoon (1990) 4,889,937
#9 Never-ending Story II Fantasy (1990) 4,790,199
#10 Odipussi Comedy (1987) 4,669,141
Links:
General Information:
www.goethe.de/kug/kue/flm/ein/enindex_pr.htm
www.german.about.com/library/weekly/aa011126a.htm
www.ithaca.edu/languages/german_films.htm
www.germany-info.org/relaunche/info/facts/facts_about/11_08.html
www.friedrich-wilhelm-murnau-stiftung.de
Information about movies: (in German only)
Movies between 1929 and 1972 www.deutscher-tonfilm.de
German movies www.film.de
Movies:
Nosferatu www.nosferatumovie.com
Metropolis www.geocities.com/Area51/5555/metropolis_images.htm
Run, Lola, Run www.sonypictures.com/classics/runlolarun/
The Tin Drum (In German only)
www.arte-tv.com/thema/19991205/dtext/programm1.htm
Sun Alley (In German only) www.sonnenallee.de
Festivals / Awards /Funding: (in German only)
Berlinale www.berlinale.de
German Film Prize www.deutscherfilmpreis.de
German Short Film Award www.deutscherkurzfilmpreis.de
German prize for young filmmakers www.firststeps.de
Short Film Festival Oberhausen www.kurzfilmtage.de
Federal Government film funding www.filmfoerderung-bkm.de/internet/index.html
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