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Cinema in ''' Germany ''' can be traced back to the very beginnings of the medium at the end of the 19th Century and German cinema has made major technical and artistic contributions to film.


BEFORE 1918. CINEMA PIONEERS

The history of cinema in Germany can be traced back to the year of the medium's birth. On November 1 1895 Max Skladanowsky and his brother Emil demonstrated their self-invented Film Projector the Bioskop at the Wintergarten Music Hall in Berlin . This performance pre-dated the first paying public display of the Lumière Brothers ' Cinematographe in Paris on 28 December of the same year, a performance that Max Skladanowsky attended and at which he was able to ascertain that the Cinematographe was technically superior to his Bioskop. Other German film pioneers included the Berliners Oskar Messter and Max Gliewe , two of several individuals who independently in 1896 first used a Geneva Drive (which allows the film to be advanced intermittently one frame at a time) in a projector, and the Cinematographer Guido Seeber .

In its earliest days, the cinematograph was perceived as an attraction for the well-to-do part of society, but the novelty of moving pictures did not last long. Soon trivial short films were being shown as fairground attractions aimed at the working and lower-middle class. The booths in which these films were shown were known in Germany somewhat disparagingly as ''Kintopps''. Film-makers with an artistic bent attempted to counter this view of cinema with longer movies based on literary models, and the first German "artistic" films began to be produced from around 1910 , an example being the Edgar Allan Poe Adaptation ''The Student of Prague'' of 1913 which was co-directed by Paul Wegener and the Dane Stellan Rye , photographed by Guido Seeber and played by actors from the company of Max Reinhardt .

Prior to 1914 , however, many foreign films were imported. In the era of the Silent Film there were no language boundaries and Danish and Italian Films were particularly popular in Germany. The public's desire to see more films with particular actors led to the development in Germany, as elsewhere, of the phenomenon of the Film Star ; the actress Henny Porten was one of the earliest German stars. Public desire to see popular film stories being continued encouraged the production of Film Serial s, especially in the genre of Mystery Film s, which is where the director Fritz Lang began his illustrious career.

The outbreak of World War I and the subsequent boycott of, for example, French Films left a noticeable gap in the market. By 1916 , there already existed some 2000 fixed venues for movie performances and initially film screenings had to supplemented or even replaced by Variety turns. In 1917 a process of concentration and partial nationalisation of the German film industry began with the founding of Universum Film AG (Ufa), which was partly a reaction to the very effective use that the Allied Powers had found for the new medium for the purpose of Propaganda . Under the aegis of the military, so-called ''Vaterland'' films were produced, which equalled the Allies' films in the matter of propaganda and disparagement of the enemy. Audiences however did not care to swallow the patriotic medicine without the accompanying sugar of the light-entertainment films which, consequently, Ufa also promoted. It was in this way that the German film industry became the largest in Europe.


1918-1933. FILM IN THE WEIMAR REPUBLIC

In the period immediately following World War I, movies were a popular escape into '' (1920). The Expressionist Movement died down during the mid- 1920s , but it continued to influence world cinema for years after, its influence being particular noticeable on Horror Films and Film Noir in America, and the works of European directors as diverse as Jean Cocteau and Ingmar Bergman .

Ufa had been privatised in 1921 by a sale of the state's holdings to the Deutsche Bank and had become the mainstay of an industry that produced up to 600 feature films a year in the 1920s. In addition to Ufa, there were some 230 film companies in business in Berlin alone at this time. However, film industry financing was a fragile business in the unstable economy of the Weimar Republic , and this, coupled with the industry's tendency to overreach itself financially (such as in the production of Fritz Lang's '' Metropolis '' (1927), perhaps the most famous German film of this period), frequently led to bankruptcies and financial ruin. Ufa itself was forced to go into a disadvantageous partnership called Parufamet with the American studios Paramount and MGM in 1925 before being taken over by the Nationalist industrialist and newspaper owner Alfred Hugenberg in 1927 . The company's financial travails did not prevent it from producing numerous significant films throughout this period, among them, Ernst Lubitsch 's ''Madame Dubary'' (1919), Lang's epic production of '' Die Nibelungen '', and F.W. Murnau's '' The Last Laugh '' ( 1925 ), and the development of the studios at Babelsberg , originally established in 1912 but later taken over by Ufa and expanded massively to accommodate the filming of ''Metropolis'', gave the German film industry a highly-developed infrastructure.

In addition to developments in the industry itself, the Weimar period saw the birth of Film Criticism as a serious discipline whose practitioners included Rudolf Arnheim in Die Weltbühne and in ''Film als Kunst'' (1932), Béla Balázs in ''Der Sichtbare Mensch'' (1924), Siegfried Kracauer in the Frankfurter Zeitung , and Lotte H. Eisner in the Filmkurier .

After the influence of Expressionism began to wane a variety of other genres and styles developed in the 1920s. Movies influenced by '' (1927) epitomises the energy of 1920s Berlin. The polarised politics of the Weimar Period were also reflected in some its movies. A series of patriotic films on Prussia n history starring Otto Gebühr as Frederick The Great were produced throughout the 1920s and were popular with the nationalist right-wing, who strongly criticised the "asphalt" films' "decadence".

The arrival of sound at the very end of the 1920s produced a final artistic flourish of German film before the collapse of the Weimar Republic in 1933 . Sound production and distribution were quickly taken up by the German film industry and by 1932 Germany had 3,800 cinemas equipped to play sound films. '' Der Blaue Engel '' ( 1930 ) by the Austria n director Josef Von Sternberg was Germany's first talkie (shot simultaneously in German and English) and made an international star of Marlene Dietrich . Other early sound films of note include '' Berlin Alexanderplatz '', Pabst's version of Bertolt Brecht 's '' The Threepenny Opera '' and Lang's '' M '' (all 1931). Brecht was also one of the creators of the explicitly communist film '' Kuhle Wampe '' (1932), which was banned soon after its release.

See also List Of Films Made In Weimar Germany


1933-1945. FILM IN THE THIRD REICH



The uncertain economic and political situation in Weimar Germany had already led to a number of film-makers and performers leaving the country, primarily for the United States ; Ernst Lubitsch moved to Hollywood as early as 1923, the Hungarian-born Michael Curtiz in 1926. However, the Nazi seizure of power in 1933 turned the trickle into a flood. Some 1,500 directors, producers, actors and other film professionals Emigrated in the years after the Nazis came to power. Among them were such key figures as the Producer Erich Pommer , the studio head of Ufa, stars Marlene Dietrich and Peter Lorre , and director Fritz Lang. Lang's exodus to America is legendary; it is said that ''Metropolis'' so greatly impressed Joseph Goebbels that he asked Lang to become the head of his Propaganda film unit. Lang chose to flee to America instead, where he had a long and prosperous Career . Many up-and-coming German directors also fled to the United States , bringing their substantial talents to bear in Hollywood and having a major influence on American film as a result. A number of the Universal Horror films of the 1930s were directed by German emigrees, including Karl Freund , Joe May and Robert Siodmak . Directors Edgar Ulmer and Douglas Sirk and the Austrian-born screenwriter (and later director) Billy Wilder also emigrated from Nazi Germany to Hollywood success. Not all those in the film industry threatened by the Nazi regime were able to escape; the actor and director Kurt Gerron was one notable filmmaker who perished in a Concentration Camp .

Within weeks of the '' Machtergreifung '', Alfred Hugenberg had effectively turned over Ufa to the ends of the Nazis, excluding Jews from employment in the company in March 1933, several months before the foundation in June of the '' Reichsfilmkammer '' (Reich Chamber of Film), the body of the Nazi state charged with control of the film industry, which marked the official exclusion of Jews and foreigners from employment in the German film industry. As part of the process of '' Gleichschaltung '' all film production in Germany was subordinate to the ''Reichsfilmkammer'', which was directly responsible to Goebbel's Propaganda Ministry , and all those employed in the industry had to be members of the ''Reichsfachschaft Film''. "Non-Aryan" film professionals and those whose politics or personal life were unacceptable to the Nazis were excluded from the ''Reichsfachschaft'' and thus denied employment in the industry. Some 3,000 individuals were affected by this employment ban. In addition, as Journalist s were also organised as a division of the Propaganda Ministry, Goebbels was able to abolish Film Criticism in 1936, and replace it with ''Filmbeobachtung'' (film observation); journalists could only report on the content of a film, not offer judgement on its artistic or other worth.

With the German film industry now effectively an arm of the '' (1942) and '' Wunschkonzert '' (1941), which both combine elements of the musical, wartime romance and patriotic propaganda, '' Frauen Sind Doch Bessere Diplomaten '' (1941), a comic Musical which was one of the earliest German films in colour, and '' Wiener Blut '' (1942), the adaptation of a Johann Strauß comic Operetta . The importance of the cinema as a tool of the state, both for its propaganda value and its ability to keep the populace entertained, can be seen in the filming history of Veit Harlan 's '' Kolberg '' (1945), the most expensive film of the Nazi era, for the shooting of which tens of thousands of soldiers were diverted from their military positions to appear as extras.

Despite the emigration of many talented film-makers and the political restrictions, the period was not without technical and aesthetic innovations, the introduction of Agfacolor film production being a notable example. Technical and aesthetic achievement could also be turned to the specific ends of the Nazi state, most spectacularly in the work of Leni Riefenstahl . Riefenstahl's '' Triumph Of The Will '' ( 1935 ), documenting the 1934 Nuremberg Rally , and '' Olympia '' ( 1938 ), documenting the 1936 Summer Olympics , pioneered techniques of camera movement and editing that have influenced many later films, but both films, particularly ''Triumph of the Will'', remain highly controversial as their aesthetic merit is inseparable from their propagandising of Nazi ideals.


POST-WAR RECONSTRUCTION


The occupation and reconstruction of Germany by the Four Powers in the period immediately after the end of World War II brought a major and long-lasting change to the economic conditions under which the industry in Germany had previously operated. The holdings of Ufa were confiscated by the Allies and, as part of the process of Decartelisation , licences to produce films were shared between a range of much smaller companies. In addition, the Occupation Statute of 1949 , which granted partial independence to the newly created Federal Republic Of Germany , specifically forbade the imposition of import quotas to protect German film production from foreign competition, the result of lobbying by the American industry as represented by the MPAA .

Amidst the devastation of the '' Stunde Null '' year of 1945 cinema attendance was unsurprisingly down to a fraction of its wartime heights, but already by the end of the decade it had reached levels that exceeded the pre-war period. For the first time in many years, German audiences had free access to cinema from around the world and in this period the films of Charlie Chaplin remained popular, as were Melodrama s from the United States. Nonetheless, the share of the film market for German films in this period and into the 1950s remained relatively large, taking up some 40% of the total market. American films took up around 30% of the market despite having around twice as many films in distribution as the German industry in the same time frame (Schneider 1990:35, 42 & 44).

Many of the German films of the immediate post-war period can be characterised as belonging to the genre of the '' Trümmerfilm '' (literally "rubble film"). These films show strong affinities with the work of Italian Neorealists , not least Roberto Rossellini 's neorealist trilogy which included '' Germany Year Zero '' (1948), and are concerned primarily with day-to-day life in the devastated Germany and an initial reaction to the events of the Nazi period (the full horror of which was first experienced by many in documentary footage from liberated concentration camps). Such films include Wolfgang Staudte 's '' Die Mörder Sind Unter Uns (The Murderers are among us)'' (1946), the first film made in post-war Germany, and Wolfgang Liebeneiner 's '' Liebe 47 (Love 47)'' (1949), an adaptation of Wolfgang Borchert 's play '' Draußen Vor Der Tür ''.


WEST GERMAN CINEMA


The 1950s


Despite the advent of a regular Television service in the Federal Republic in 1952 , cinema attendances continued to grow through much of the 1950s, reaching a peak of 817.5 million visits in 1956 . The majority of the films of this period set out to do no more than entertain the audience and had few pretensions to artistry or active engagement with social issues. The defining genre of the period was arguably the '' Heimatfilm '' ("homeland film"), in which morally simplistic tales of love and family were played out in a rural setting, often in the mountains of Bavaria , Austria or Switzerland . In their day ''Heimatfilms'' were of little interest to more scholarly film critics, but in recent years they have been the subject of study in relation to what they say about the culture of West Germany in the years of the '' Wirtschaftswunder ''. Other film genres typical of this period were adaptations of operettas, hospital melodramas, comedies and musicals. Many films were Remake s of earlier Ufa productions shorn of the nationalistic '' Blut Und Boden '' traits of those Nazi-period films.

Rearmament and the founding of the '' Bundeswehr '' in 1955 brought with it a wave of war films which tended to depict the ordinary German soldiers of World War II as brave and apolitical. This period also saw a number of films that depicted the military Resistance To Hitler .

The international significance of the West German film industry of the 1950s could no longer measure up to that of France, Italy, or Japan. German films were only rarely distributed internationally as they were perceived as provincial. International co-productions such as were becoming common in France and Italy tended to be rejected by German producers (Schneider 1990:43). However a few German films and film-makers did achieve international recognition at this time, among them Bernhard Wicki 's Oscar -nominated '' Die Brücke (The Bridge)'' ( 1959 ), and the actresses Hildegard Knef and Romy Schneider .


The 1960s: Cinema in crisis


In the late 1950s, the growth in cinema attendance of the preceding decade first stagnated and then went into freefall throughout the 1960s. By 1969 West German cinema attendance at 172.2 million visits per year was less than a quarter of its 1956 post-war peak. As a consequence of this, numerous German production and distribution companies went out of business in the 1950s and 1960s and cinemas across the Federal Republic closed their doors; the number of screens in West Germany almost halved between the beginning and the end of the decade.

Initially, the crisis was perceived as a problem of overproduction. Consequently, the German film industry cut back on production. 123 German movies were produced in 1955, only 65 in 1965. However, the roots of the problem lay deeper in changing economic and social circumstances. Average incomes in the Federal Republic rose sharply and this opened up alternative leisure activities to compete with cinema-going. At this time too, television was developing into a mass medium that could compete with the cinema. In 1953 there were only 10,000 sets in West Germany; by 1962 there were 7 million (Scheider 1990:49) (Hoffman 1990:69).

The majority of films produced in the Federal Republic in the 1960s were genre works: Westerns , especially the series of movies adapted from Karl May 's popular genre novels which starred Pierre Brice as the Apache Winnetou and Lex Barker as his white blood brother Old Shatterhand ; Thriller s and crime films, notably a series of Edgar Wallace Movies in which Klaus Kinski , Heinz Drache , Wolfgang Völz , and Joachim Fuchsberger were among the regular players; and Softcore sex films, both the relatively serious ''Aufklärungsfilme'' ( Sex Education films) of Oswalt Kolle and such Exploitation Films as '' Schulmädchen-Report (Schoolgirl Report)'' (1970) and its successors. Such movies were commercially successful and often enjoyed international distribution, but won little acclaim from critics.


New German Cinema

As a reaction to the artistic and economic stagnation of German cinema, a group of young film-makers issued the Oberhausen Manifesto on 28 February 1962 . This call to arms, which included Alexander Kluge , Edgar Reitz , Peter Schamoni and Franz Josef Spieker among its signatories, provocatively declared ''"Der alte Film ist tot. Wir glauben an den neuen"'' ("The old cinema is dead. We believe in the new cinema"). Other up-and-coming film-makers allied themselves to this Oberhausen group, among them Volker Schlöndorff , Werner Herzog , Jean-Marie Straub , Wim Wenders , Hans-Jürgen Syberberg and Rainer Werner Fassbinder in their rejection of the existing German film industry and their determination to build a new industry founded on artistic excellence rather than commercial dictates.

Despite the foundation of the ''Kuratorium Junger Deutscher Film'' (Young German Film Committee) in 1965, set up under the auspices of the Federal Ministry Of The Interior to support new German films financially, the directors of this New German Cinema , who rejected co-operation with the existing film industry, were consequently often dependent on money from television. Young film-makers had the opportunity to test their mettle in such porgrammes as the stand-alone drama and documentary series '' Das Kleine Fernsehspiel '' (The Little TV Play) or the television films of the crime series '' Tatort ''. However, the broadcasters sought TV premieres for the films which they had supported financially, with theatrical showings only occurring later. As a consequence, such films tended to be unsuccessful at the cinema box-office.

This situation changed after or DVD no sooner than six months after cinema release. As a result of the funds provided by the ''Film-Fernseh-Abkommen'', German films, particularly those of the New German Cinema, gained a much greater opportunity to enjoy box-office success before they played on television (Blaney 1992:204).

The artistically ambitious and socially critical films of the New German Cinema strove to delineate themselves from what had gone before and the works of Auteur film-makers such as Kluge and Fassbinder are examples of this, although Fassbinder in his use of stars from German cinema history also sought a reconciliation between the new cinema and the old. In addition, a distinction is sometimes drawn between the avantgarde "Young German Cinema" of the 1960s and the more accessible "New German Cinema" of the 1970s. For their influences the new generation of film-makers looked to Italian Neorealism, the French '' Nouvelle Vague '' and the British New Wave but combined this eclectically with references to the well-established genres of Hollywood cinema.

The new movement saw German cinema return to international critical significance for the first time since the end of the Weimar Republic. Films such as Kluge's '' Abschied Von Gestern '' (1966), Herzog's '' Aguirre, The Wrath Of God '' (1972), Fassbinder's '' Fear Eats The Soul '' (1974) and '' The Marriage Of Maria Braun '' (1979), and Wenders' '' Paris, Texas '' (1984) found international acclaim and critical approval. Often the work of these auteurs was first recognised abroad rather than in Germany itself. The work of post-war Germany's leading novelists Heinrich Böll and Günter Grass provided source material for the adaptations '' The Lost Honour Of Katharina Blum '' (1975) (by Schlöndorff and Margarethe Von Trotta ) and '' The Tin Drum '' (1979) (by Schlöndorff alone) respectively, the latter becoming the first German film to win the Academy Award For Best Foreign Language Film . The New German Cinema also allowed for female directors to come to the fore and for the development of a feminist cinema which encompassed the works of directors such as Von Trotta, Helma Sanders-Brahms and Helke Sander .


The 1980s


Having achieved some of its goals, among them the establishment of state funding for the film industry and renewed international recognition for German films, the New German Cinema had begun to show signs of fatigue by the 1980s, even though many of its proponents continued to enjoy individual success. In addition, the "aesthetic left" nature of New German Cinema (in the words of the critic Enno Patalas ) no longer coincided with the spirit of the times.

Among the commercial successes for German films of the 1980s were the ''Otto'' film series beginning in 1985 starring comedian Otto Waalkes , Wolfgang Petersen 's adaptation of '' The NeverEnding Story '' (1984), and the internationally successful '' Das Boot '' (1981), which still holds the record for most Academy Award nominations for a German film (six). Other notable film-makers who came to prominence in the 1980s include producer Bernd Eichinger and directors Doris Dörrie , Uli Edel , and Loriot .

Away from the mainstream, the Splatter Film director Jörg Buttgereit , the Experimental Film director Werner Nekes and the provocative Christoph Schlingensief all came to prominence in the 1980s. The development of arthouse cinemas (''Programmkinos'') from the 1970s onwards provided a venue for the works of less mainstream film-makers.

From the mid-1980s the spread of Videocassette Recorder s and the arrival of private TV channels such as RTL Television provided new competition for theatrical film distribution. Cinema attendance, having rallied slightly in the late 1970s after an all-time low of 115.1 million visits in 1976 , dropped sharply again from the mid-1980s to end at just 101.6 million visits in 1989 . However, the availability of a back catalogue of films on video also allowed for a different relationship between the viewer and an individual film, whilst in the long term, private TV channels brought new money into film finance and provided a launch pad for new talent to later move into film.


EAST GERMAN CINEMA

East German cinema initially profited from the fact that much of the country's film infrastructure, notably the former UFA studios, lay in the Soviet Occupation Zone which enabled film production to get off the ground more quickly than in the Western sectors. The authorities in the Soviet Zone were keen to re-establish the film industry in their sector and an order was issued to re-open cinemas in Berlin in May 1945 within three weeks of German capitulation. The film production company '' Deutsche Film-Aktiengesellschaft '' or DEFA was founded on 17 May 1946 and took control of many of the film production facilities in the Soviet Zone which had been confiscated by order of the Soviet Military Administration In Germany in October 1945. Theoretically a Joint-stock Company , the majority interest in DEFA was held by the Socialist Unity Party Of Germany (SED) which became the ruling party of the German Democratic Republic (GDR) after 1949 and the company was founded with the express aim of Denazification and the extolling of Socialist values.

In total DEFA produced some 900 feature films during its existence as well as around 800 animated films and over 3000 documentaries and short films. In its early years, production was limited due to strict controls imposed by the authorities which restricted the subject-matter of films to topics that directly contributed to the Communist project of the state. Excluding newsreels and educational films, only 50 films were produced between 1948 and 1953. However, in later years numerous films were produced on a variety of themes. DEFA had particular strengths in (The Silent Star)'' (1960), an adaptation of a Stanislaw Lem novel, or " Red Westerns " such as '' The Sons Of The Great Mother Bear '' (1966) in which, in contrast to the typical American western, the heroes tended to be Native Americans . Many of these genre films were co-productions with other Warsaw Pact countries.

Notable non-genre films produced by DEFA include Wolfgang Staudte's adaptation of Heinrich Mann 's '' Der Untertan '' (1951); Konrad Wolf 's '' Der Geteilte Himmel (Divided Heaven)'' (1964), an adaptation of Christa Wolf 's novel; Frank Beyer 's adaptation of Jurek Becker 's '' Jacob The Liar '' (1973), the only East German film to be nominated for an Oscar; '' The Legend Of Paul And Paula '' (1973), directed by Heiner Carow from Ulrich Plenzdorf 's novel; and '' Solo Sunny '' (1980), again the work of Konrad Wolf.

However, film-making in the GDR was always constrained and influenced by the political conditions in the country. Ernst Thälmann , the communist leader in the Weimar period, was the subject of several Hagiographical films in the 1950s and although East German film-making moved away from this overtly Stalinist approach in the 1960s, film-makers were still subject to the changing political positions, and indeed the whims, of the SED leadership. For example, DEFA's full slate of contemporary films from 1966 were denied distribution, among them Frank Beyer's '' Spur Der Steine '' (1966) which was pulled from distribution after three days, not because it was antipathetic to communist principles, but because it showed that such principles, which it fostered, were not put into practice at all times in East Germany. The huge box-office hit ''The Legend of Paul and Paula'' was initially threatened with a distribution ban because of its satirical elements and supposedly only allowed a release on the say-so of Party General Secretary Erich Honecker .

In the late 1970s numerous film-makers left the GDR for the West as a result of restrictions on their work, among them director Egon Günther and actors Angelica Domröse , Eva-Maria Hagen , Katharina Thalbach , Hilmar Thate , Manfred Krug and Armin Mueller-Stahl . Many had been signatories of a 1976 petition opposing the Expatriation of socially critical singer-songwriter Wolf Biermann and had had their ability to work restricted as a result.

In the final years of the GDR, distribution of foreign films became more widespread and as a consequence, DEFA's importance was reduced, although its continuing role in producing films for East German television should not be underestimated. Following the Wende , DEFA was sold off by the Treuhand in 1992 , but its intellectual property rights were handed to the charitable '' DEFA-Stiftung '' (DEFA Foundation) which exploits these rights in conjunction with a series of private companies.


GERMAN CINEMA TODAY

Today's biggest producers include Constantin Film , Bavaria, Studio Hamburg , and UFA . Recent film releases such as '' Run Lola Run '' by Tom Tykwer , '' Good Bye Lenin! '' by Wolfgang Becker , '' Head-On '' by Fatih Akin , '' Downfall '' by Oliver Hirschbiegel , and Academy Award winner '' The Lives Of Others '' by Florian Henckel Von Donnersmarck have arguably managed to recapture the provocative and innovative nature of 1970s New German cinema. A number of modern German films try to examine the German history of the 20th century in totalitarian systems in movies like ''Der Untergang'', '' Sophie Scholl – The Final Days '' and '' The Lives Of Others ''.

Apart from the international releases, a number of intimate German films have enjoyed critical success in France , where the term '' Nouvelle Vague Allemande '' as been applied to smaller productions mostly coming out of Berlin. A circle of directors of penetrating, realistic studies of relationships and characters informally constitute the " Berlin School " of filmmaking. Among those directors are Christian Petzold , Thomas Arslan, Valeska Grisebach, Christoph Hochhäusler, Benjamin Heisenberg, Henner Winckler and Angela Schanelec.

Other notable directors working in German currently include Sönke Wortmann , Caroline Link (winner of an Academy Award), Romuald Karmakar , Harun Farocki , Hans-Christian Schmid , Andreas Dresen , Ulrich Köhler , Ulrich Seidl , and Sebastian Schipper , as well as comedy directors Michael Herbig and Sven Unterwaldt.

Germany has recently experienced an influx of Independent and underground films (mostly pertaining to the Horror Genre ). Directors in this popular circle include Andreas Schnaas , Olaf Ittenbach , Jorg Buttgereit , and Timo Rose .

The new decade has also seen a resurgence of the German film industry, with bigger-budget films and good returns at the German box office.


LITERATURE AND LINKS

  • Blaney, Martin 1992 ''Symbiosis or Confrontation?'' Bonn

  • Hoffman, Kay 1990 ''Am Ende Video – Video am Ende?'' Berlin

  • ''. Princeton: Univ. of Princeton Press. ISBN 0-691-11519-2

  • Schneider, Irmela 1990 ''Film, Fernsehen & Co.'' Heidelberg.

  • German Film History

  • German films New releases, contemporary German cinema, East German film, early silent films, German actors & directors, & movie soundtracks.

  • european-films.net - Reviews, trailers, interviews, news and previews of recent and upcoming European films (in English)



REFERENCES



SEE ALSO