The first book-length study in any language of the "Berlin School," the
most significant filmmaking movement to come out of Germany since the
1970s.
The contemporary German directors collectively known as the "Berlin
School" constitute the most significant filmmaking movement to come out
of Germany since the New German Cinema of the 1970s, not least because
their films mark the emergence of a new film language. The Berlin School
filmmakers, including Christian Petzold, Thomas Arslan, Angela
Schanelec, Christoph Hochhäusler, Ulrich Köhler, Benjamin Heisenberg,
Maren Ade, and Valeska Grisebach, are reminiscent of the directors of
the New German Autorenkino and of French cinéma des auteurs of the
1960s.
This is the first book-length study of the Berlin School in any
language. Its central thesis - that the movement should be regarded as a
"counter-cinema" - is built around the unusual style of realism employed
in its films, a realism that presents images of a Germany that does not
yet exist. Abel concludes that it is precisely how these films' images
and sounds work that renders them political: they are political not
because they are message-driven films but because they are made
politically, thus performing a "redistribution of the sensible" - a
direct artistic intervention in the way politics partitions ways of
doing and making, saying and seeing.
Marco Abel is Professor of English and Film Studies at the University of
Nebraska, Lincoln.
