Tomorrow, the Berlin Film Festival opens its doors and Weimar cinema will again play a central role in its programme. This year’s Retrospective section, curated in cooperation with New York’s Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), is dedicated to the ‘Weimar Touch’, the international influence of Weimar film after 1933 on such celebrated films like Casablanca, Hangmen Also Die! and Some Like It Hot. Continue reading “Weimar Cinema at Berlinale”
Tag: Theatre & Film
Journal review: German Life & Letters, 1/2013
In the current issue of German Life and Letters, Kristen M. Hylenski analyses Valeska Gert’s four autobiographical texts, Mein Weg (1931), Die Bettlerbar von New York (1950), Ich bin eine Hexe (1968), and Katze von Kampen (1973), revealing ‘the ways in which Gert revisits and revises her life story. While each text recycles material from the previous ones, Gert continually reframes her narrative according to the changing audiences and historical contexts. Continue reading “Journal review: German Life & Letters, 1/2013”
When Weimar Berlin came to London…
Fun fact of Weimar history (making): Dame Judi Dench played Sally Bowles in the original West End production of Cabaret at the Palace Theatre, London, 27th February 1968, which had a significant influence on the popular image of Weimar Berlin.
Martin Miller Archive opened
For anyone interested in Weimar-era theatre, the IGRS has just opened the private collection of Martin Miller to interested researchers. The on-going archival process is documented in a blog: ‘The Martin Miller and Hannah Norbert Miller collection is one of a number of important archives relating to German theatre and exile studies held by the Institute of Germanic & Romance Studies (IGRS) at the University of London. Continue reading “Martin Miller Archive opened”
Off Topic: East Berlin 1990
This documentary about everyday life in Berlin’s Prenzlauer Berg district shortly after the fall of the Wall is an incredibly useful resource for teaching German history. It’s available for free online and can also be downloaded.
It’s set nearly 60 years after the Weimar Republic, but maybe some members of the WSN might find it useful.
Student Dissertation on Reinert’s ‘Nerven’
Sabine Grimshaw, a student of history at the University of Sheffield and one of the members of the WSN, has written a very interesting dissertation on Robert Reinert’s 1919 film Nerven. She focuses on the themes of trauma, gender and revolution in the postwar period and analyses how Nerven presents each of these themes. She has kindly offered to share her thesis with anyone interested in the topic. Please contact her at sabine.stephanie[at]hotmail.co.uk.
Gender and the State in Weimar Germany and Austria
For the whole of its existence, Weimar democracy was a contentious and hotly debated topic: which form should the new state take exactly? The volume Staat in Unordnung? Geschlechterperspektiven auf Deutschland und Österreich zwischen den Weltkriegen sheds some light on the contemporary debate in Germany and Austria, with a focus on the aspect of gender. In these countries, the profoundly changed image of the role of women in society after the Great War was often related to the establishment of a democratic regime, so this study promises some important insights for this field of study.
The volume has been edited by Stefan Krammer, Marion Löffler and Martin Weidinger, all based at the University of Vienna’s research centre ‘Tropen des Staates‘.
Hollywood in Weimar
This new study – the product of Ursula Saekel’s PhD project at Bremen University – analyzes the role of American film as an agent of Western modernity and consumerism in Weimar Germany.
New Research on the ‘New Woman’
The ‘New Woman’ belongs to the most popular topics in Weimar research and the new volume City Girls. Bubiköpfe & Blaustrümpfe in den 1920er Jahren attests to her continuing fascination. There are many articles here on the figure of the ‘Neue Frau’ in literature, but also on the role of female smoking, the German reception of Hollywood stars Clara Bow and Coleen Moore, and on dancer Valeska Gert.
90 years of ‘Nosferatu’
Today, Der Spiegel celebrates the 90th anniversary of the German premiere of Nosferatu in 1922 (in German):
’90 Jahre Nosferatu: Schreckgespenst mit Hasenzähnen’
‘The Artist’ sparks silent film revival
The success of Michel Hazanavicius’s The Artist (peaking at the Oscars last Sunday) has not only drawn popular attention to 1920s fashion, but – as The New Yorker argues in its recent issue – might also initiate a revival for the silent films of the Weimar era.
Weimar at the Berlinale
The Berinale Film Festival rolls out the red carpet today and Weimar cinema takes centre stage: this year’s Retrospektive part of the festival is dedicated to Mezhrabpom, the Russian-German film studio dubbed ‘The Red Dream Factory’.
On 12 February, the Filmstudio Babelsberg, where most of the great works of Weimar cinema like Metropolis or Der blaue Engel were produced, will celebrate its centenary with a special programme at the Berlinale. German media are already gearing up to the 100-year anniversary with various features on Babelsberg’s history:
Babelsberg-Diva Asta Nielsen: Deutschlans erster Superstar (Der Spiegel)
Hollywood in Brandenburg: 100 Jahre Babelsberg (Financial Times Deutschland)
Film ab! Ein Streifzug durch Babelsberg – und 100 Jahre Film (Deutschlandradio)
Studio Babelsberg: Die Illusionsmaschine (Berliner Zeitung)
Weimar fashion back in fashion
Following the succes of the silent film The Artist, the British newspaper The Guardian looks to stars of Weimar and early Hollywood cinema for fashion advice. (Sadly, there is no mention of the most fashionable of them all, Lili Damita and Claudette Colbert.)
Art and Aesthetics in Leni Riefenstahl’s Work
This new book on Leni Riefenstahl’s extensive body of work promises to analyze the ‘often forgotten obstinacy and forwardness’ of her art without ignoring its political functions.
Markwart Herzog, Mario Leis: Kunst und Ästhetik im Werk Leni Riefenstahls
Weimar Film Reconsidered
Weimar cinema has become a very dynamic field of research over the last few years. One of the most important contributions surely is Anton Kaes’ Shell Shock Cinema: Weimar Culture and the Wounds of War, but The Many Faces of Weimar Cinema. Rediscovering Germany’s Filmic Legacy (ed. by Christian Rogowski), Stephen Brockmann’s A Critical History of German Film and Tobias Nagl’s Die unheimliche Maschine: Rasse und Repräsentation im Weimarer Kino also add significant new insight into the cinematic culture of the interwar years.
The most interesting current in recent scholarship is the critical reassessment of the traditional canon of Weimar cinema that focused too much on modernist masterpieces like The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari and M. Brigitte Braun’s research on local and regional film is noteworthy in this respect.