Marco Abel 
The Counter-Cinema of the Berlin School 

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.

Spis treści

Acknowledgments

Note on Translations

Introduction: So This Was Germany – A Preliminary Account of the Berlin School

Thomas Arslan: Realism beyond Identity

Christian Petzold:
Heimat-Building as Utopia

Angela Schanelec: Narrative, Understanding, Language

Revolver Cinema and
Électrons libres: Cinema Must Be Dangerous

Christoph Hochhäusler: Intensifying Life

Benjamin Heisenberg: Filming Simply as Resistance

Valeska Grisebach: A Sharpening of Our Regard

Maren Ade: Filming between Sincerity and Irony

Ulrich Köhler: The Politics of Refusal

Conclusion: A Counter-Cinema

Filmography

Bibliography

Index