History and Heritage in Contemporary Film
Dr Alex Lloyd |St Edmund Hall & Magdalen College | alexandra.lloyd@seh.ox.ac.uk
Overview
These lectures provide an introduction to theories of historical representation in film using examples from contemporary
German cinema. The course will be of particular interest to those studying (or intending to study) film for Papers VIII,
XII, and XIV. Week One provides an overview of the topic, as well as an outline of critical approaches to the subject. In
each subsequent lecture a particular historical moment or experience is discussed by means of an analysis of two recent
films. It is recommended that students watch the films in advance if possible. They are all available in the Taylor
Institution Library.
Week One | Historical Representation in Film: An Introduction
How is the past depicted and constructed on screen?
Week Two | Dark Heritage: Adolescence and Nazism
NaPolA: Elite für den Führer, dir. by Dennis Gansel (2004)
Lore, dir. by Cate Shortland (2012)
Week Three | Stasiland or Ostalgie: Depicting East Germany
Sonnenallee, dir. by Leander Haußmann (1999)
Das Leben der Anderen, dir. by Florian Henckel von Donnersmark (2006)
Week Four | Prada-Meinhof? Terrorism in Contemporary Film
Der Baader Meinhof Komplex, dir. by Uli Edel (2008)
Die innere Sicherheit, dir. by Christian Petzold (2000)
Suggested Reading
A bibliography for each topic covered will be provided at the relevant lecture. The following texts give a general
introduction to contemporary film and film studies.
Clarke, David (ed.), German Cinema since Unification (London: Continuum, 2006)
Cooke, Paul, Contemporary German Cinema (Manchester University Press, 2012)
---., and Chris Homewood, New Directions in German Cinema (London: I.B. Tauris, 2011)
Brockmann, Stephen, A Critical History of German Film (Rochester, NY: Camden House, 2010)
Fisher, Jaimey, and Brad Prager, The Collapse of the Conventional: German Film and Its Politics at the Turn of the Twenty-First
Century (Detroit, MI: Wayne State University Press, 2010)
Hake, Sabine, German National Cinema (London: Routledge, 2002)
Halle, Randall, German Film after Germany: Towards a Transnational Aesthetic (Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois
Press, 2008)
Hodgin, Nick, Screening the East: Heimat, Memory and Nostalgia in German Film Since 1989 (New York; Oxford: Berghahn
Books, 2011)
Hoffgen, Maggie, Studying German Cinema (Leighton Buzzard: Auteur, 2009)
See also:
http://www.german-films.de/
http://www.goethe.de/kue/flm/weg/weg/enindex.htm
http://germanfilm.co.uk/
http://www.filmportal.de/en
http://germanfilm.co.uk/how-to-read-a-film/
http://users.ox.ac.uk/~worc1306/Germanfilm.html