Narratives of transformation and resistance

In recent years, considerable attention has been paid to the social and economic significance of the arts and cultural production, or 'creative industries'. Research into the relationship between the latter and community changes has been brought to the fore by the introduction of interactive media technologies, and by the need to understand and conceptualise them culturally. However, this is not to say that the issue is a completely new one and thus, in this article, I aim to investigate film-first in general, and then specifically the New German Cinema (NGC), and its complex interconnectedness with the postwar West German society. I would like to highlight, though, the fact that one finds different voices within this cinematic movement, and that it is less homogeneous than the term 'New German Cinema' might suggest. Initially, it has to be noted that the feature films of the Nac can be broadly categorised as political interventions, since they use the medium's capacity to make 'narratives for change' discursively available to a mass audience. However, these productions are not straightforward political propaganda but rather fictional texts, which are composed in a range of different ways (formally, as well as in terms of their story content). Hence the NGC has to be seen as a project within which diversity (in the form of complex articulations) is held together by the aim to create 'new films' for a 'new society'. In this vein, film can be theorised as a practice that is part of a social process (Turner, 1993). A distinctly cultural studies approach to film is useful in this analysis. Since 'culture' became redefined by cultural studies as 'a whole way of life', subject to construction processes within society and carried out on the basis of shared beliefs, specifically symbolic systems such as literature and film have become prime research targets. As a consequence of wanting to understand how film might be part of the particular culture under analysis, cultural studies scholars such as David Morley (1993) and Roger Bromley (2001) have looked more closely into film itself as a specific means of cultural (re-)production. Subsequently, film has been examined as a cultural product and as a social practice, valuable both for itself and for what it can tell us about the systems and processes of culture. Today, the analysis of film is not restricted to film studies but is a common practice in many disciplines, including cultural studies. However, although film is the object of study within various cultural studies investigations, it is hardly ever the final target of inquiry, but rather part of a broader argument about representation. This makes film one case study within the vast area of cultural production, and the methods applied to its analysis are not confined to it as such, but are transferable to the examination of other media. This introduction of the concept of film as a social practice leads me to the discussion of the NGC as an example of changes within the media landscape in post-war West Germany. For this purpose, the 'old' German cinema and its respective productions have to be understood as a point of departure for the NGC. Here I am thinking especially of the so-called 'Heimat' films: a genre which, with regards to production and reception figures, dominated the 1950s cinematic scene in West Germany. In narrative terms, these films perpetuate an unproblematic sense of community, which is rooted both in the past and in tradition, linked to a bounded space that mainly takes the shape of a rural idyll, and generally seems to be a timeless allusion to essentialist notions of communality. The films' realist mode and linear plotlines call on the audience to identify with the protagonists, who are usually caught up in romantic and happy-ending love stories. A prime example of the 'Heimat' films' hero is the forester in Grun ist die Heide (Green Is The Heath, Deppe 1951)

Aesthetics · Art · Film studies · German · Literature · Media studies · Movie theater · Narrative · Political science · Politics · Sociology · The arts · Visual arts · History · Law · Media Studies and Communication · Sociology and Education Studies

• From Alice to Buena Vista

  Brad Prager, Roger Bromley•German Studies Review•2002

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