Die Berliner Schule / The Berlin School Die Berliner Schule • Refers to a group of recent and contemporary German filmmakers • Originated in post-1990 Germany • Recognised first in France: “Nouvelle Vague Allemande” (German New Wave cinema) “Die Berliner Schule” • Turn towards post-unification social reality – political dimension • Many of the directors studied at the Deutsche Film- und Fernsehakademie Berlin • Not all are based in Berlin (e.g. Christoph Hochhäusler studied in Munich) • Early 1990s: Christian Petzold, Thomas Arslan, Angela Schanelec (older generation) • Since late 1990s: Christoph Hochhäusler, Benjamin Heisenberg (and many others) • Film magazine Revolver since 1998 – forum for discussing new film aesthetics Aesthetics of boredom, or just boring? • Film critic and film maker, Oskar Roehler, on the films of the Berlin School: “austauschbar, depressiv und langweilig” “sie [vertreiben] die Leute aus den Kinos” “slow cinema” • Focus on everyday life of contemporary Germans, e.g. work • Affluent, bored bourgeois characters searching for meaning / action • Presents gaps between events rather than the events themselves Aesthetics of Boredom • Paul Cook: Berlin School films fit into established European aesthetic tradition of bourgeois boredom • Interplay between boredom and expectation defines characters: what happens? • Cinema of inaction? Aesthetics of Boredom • Characters are often looking for a new life, a new beginning • Often they have no choice but to give way to their reality of tedium and lack of action • Slow pace of storytelling allows for prolonged periods of hollow time • Political potential: films reveal tensions in German society today • Marco Abel: insecurities around social mobility in neoliberal present • Cook: Yella exposes “the grotesquely ephemeral workings of white-collar corporate capitalism” Christian Petzold • One of the leading figures of the Berlin School • Famous for his Gespenster trilogy: Die innere Sicherheit (2000) Gespenster (2005) Yella (2007) • Depiction of post-wall Germany on level of micropolitics (not big macro-political issues) • Characters populate in-between, ghostlike spaces, real and dreamlike • These spaces constitute heart of post-wall, neoliberal Germany