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Film Festival Presents New German Cinema; Second Show Is Tonight
By Carole Baden
NOVEMBER 5, 1999--The New German Film Festival opened last night, presented in conjunction with the German Expressionist exhibition at the Allen Memorial Art Museum. The museum, the Oberlin Film Series, and the Independent Film Series--in consultation with the Oberlin College German department--sponsor the festival. Timothy Corrigan, professor of English at Temple University, introduced the festival yesterday with a talk, "The Three Faces of Lola: German Cinema before and after Fassbinder."
Including German films from 1922 to 1999, the seven-day festival focuses on the New German Cinema movement, which began in 1962. Festival organizers chose this movement because it corresponds with a course on New German Cinema that Elizabeth Hamilton, visiting assistant professor of German, is teaching this semester.
A group of filmmakers who shared a common vision of revitalizing post-World Ware II German cinema started the New German Cinema movement. Their films attempt to critique post-war German society, and raise issues such as societal power imbalance, the role of women, and the struggle to deal with the country's Nazi past.
Hamilton describes the situation the filmmakers faced.
"After World War II, Germany had gone through a housecleaning to avoid reminders from the public-arena horrors of its Nazi past," she says "New German Cinema filmmakers were instrumental in uncovering what had come before. They wanted to look at social structures in their own society that hadn't been changed by the 'housecleaning. '"
While the filmmakers sought to break away from their predecessors and create a new form of cinema (hence the word "new" in their name), they looked back to earlier models for inspiration. A primary influence was German Expressionism, which was active earlier in the century.
"In general, Hamilton says, "Expressionism as a film style is extremely important for New German Cinema. Filmmakers wanted to create a new film language, so they looked to Expressionism, which had been trying to do the same thing."
One New German Cinema director, Werner Herzog, was so impressed by the Expressionist director Murnau's classic retelling of the vampire story in Nosferatu (1922) that he faithfully remade the film in 1978. Murnau's film will be shown Saturday.
"These younger artists had enormous respect for Expressionist filmmakers because of the risks they took in trying new images," says Hamilton. "The two movements dealt with some of the same issues, like the role of the individual in society, the role of community, and the problem of isolation and alienation."
The films showing in the festival are by some of the most noted filmmakers of the New German Cinema movement
Aguirre, the Wrath of God (1973) is by the self-taught and prolific Werner Herzog. It tells the story of a Spanish expedition through Peru in 1560 that sought the mythical city of El Dorado. The film contains elements typical of Herzog, such as lush, breathtaking landscapes, documentary film techniques, and a scathing critique of colonialism.
Rainer Werner Fassbinder's Ali: Fear Eats the Soul (1975), deals with the intergenerational relationship between a Moroccan immigrant worker and an elderly working woman. Fassbinder, another prolific and highly controversial filmmaker, was noted for his artistic criticisms of German society and its treatment of those considered "outsiders "
The final two nights of the festival are devoted to this past summer's breakaway hit Run Lola Run.The movie features three workings of the main character Lola's dilemma: how she can come up with a huge sum of money in 20 minutes to save her boyfriend's life. It incorporates MTV-style editing, animation, and a pounding techno-music score.
Hamilton puts the film in the festival's context: "What Run Lola Run shares with New German Cinema is the possibility of rethinking the past and considering different versions of the same event. Then you can ask, 'Where are there connections, where is meaning really produced, and where is the truth: in story A, B or C?' This is part of the legacy of New German Cinema and the modernist project."
All films will be shown in Kettering Hall, Room 11. Admission is free, thanks to a grant from the Max Kade Foundation.
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