Berlin School (film)

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Berlin School is the name for a style in German cinema that emerged in the mid-1990s.

term

There was already talk of the Berlin School in the 1970s , at the time with reference to the so-called worker film. However, this article deals with the Berlin School of the 1990s and 2000s, which refers to the New German Film and auteur films of the 1960s and 1970s.

The question of the origin of the term Berlin School has not yet been clarified. However, film journalists such as Rüdiger Suchsland or Hans Helmut Prinzler have repeatedly pointed out that the term “Berlin School” was used in a review of Angela Schanelec's film “My slow life” shortly before it was shown at the Viennale by Merten Worthmann, a film critic of the weekly newspaper Die Time , on September 27, 2001 "was first picked up in this country" or "first brought into play".

The first generation of Christian Petzold , Thomas Arslan and Angela Schanelec , who met at the German Film and Television Academy Berlin (dffb), belong to the loose group of filmmakers . Since the early 1990s, they have been delighting German film critics with works in the aesthetic of the Berlin School.

In 2003 the film was Milchwald of Christoph Hochhäusler at the Berlinale. The following year Angela Schanelec's film Marseille was shown at the Cannes International Film Festival . Both and other similar German films met with a response from French film critics, which was reflected in reviews in Cahiers du cinéma and Le Monde . The French journalists refer to this trend as "Nouvelle Vague Allemande", the German press opted for "Berlin School". According to Cathy Rohnke, this term works as a “marketing label”, not as a description of content. The films classified under this are very different and rich in variety, and the film aesthetics are not an exclusive Berlin phenomenon.

Currently, the works by Christoph Hochhäusler ( Milchwald and Falscher Bekenner), Benjamin Heisenberg ( Sleeper ), Maren Ade , Henner Winckler ( class trip) and Valeska Grisebach ( Mein Stern) are also included in the Berlin school. Although Hochhäusler, Heisenberg and Ade are graduates of the University of Television and Film in Munich, the term “Berlin School” is retained. In their entirety, the directors reflect the entire spectrum of German film schools, some were also trained abroad, some work closely together, others do not know each other or even reject collectivism.

Other directors assigned to the Berlin School include Elke Hauck , Sonja Heiss , Ulrich Köhler , Jan Krüger , Hannes Lang , Matthias Luthardt , Pia Marais , Timo Müller , Ayşe Polat , Jan Schomburg , Maria Speth , Isabelle Stever and Sören Voigt . Christian Petzold, Thomas Arslan and Angela Schanelec are role models for the younger directors at the Berlin School.

features

With the Berlin School, a group of young German filmmakers has established itself beyond mainstream cinema. If they have a strong will to style, they are less interested in telling spectacular stories, but rather everyday scenarios based on their own experience are explored. The backgrounds of the characters shown in the films are usually only hinted at, not described in detail. People are often on the run, but without being able to achieve new horizons or a better life. The films from the Berlin School are set in anonymous non-locations and in sprawled, run-down landscapes or city quarters. In contrast to the socially critical New German Film of the 1970s, no alternatives to the current social system are offered. The depressive mood of many of these films ultimately also reflects the increasing social insecurity and the fear of falling into the intellectual middle class, from which these young filmmakers come.

The driving force behind the stories is often the protagonists' desperation as they struggle for their personal happiness. The often open ending leaves it up to the viewer to decide whether the characters' longing is fulfilled, but sometimes there is a bitter ending. Crucial issues in society are broken down into feelings and motives of individuals or dealt with in the microcosm of the family or the relationship between two people. There is seldom redemption for the disasters that take place there.

A common feature of the Berlin school is the narrative visual aesthetic, for which the style-defining cameramen and women are responsible, such as Jürgen Jürges , Hans Fromm , Reinhold Vorneider, Nikolai von Grävenitz, Bernhard Keller , Bernadette Paaßen and Patrick Orth and film editors like Bettina Boehler . A style of sparseness (long camera shots, few cuts, reduced dialogues and extended silence as well as sparingly used musical background) focuses the audience's attention on the characteristics of the film characters. The events often run in what feels like real time, which is sometimes reminiscent of the quality of documentation. The viewers can feel voyeuristic or uninvited.

discourse

The journalistic mouthpiece of the directors of the Berlin School is the twice-yearly magazine Revolver , in which the discourse of filmmakers is developed and illustrated. It is edited by Jens Börner, Benjamin Heisenberg , Christoph Hochhäusler, Franz Müller , Nicolas Wackerbarth and Saskia Walker. In this context, events such as film screenings and discussions are organized. Experienced international directors and young German directors will be introduced and included in the discourse. So was z. In January 2012, for example, the American mumblecore director Andrew Bujalski was invited to a workshop and panel in Berlin. A new generation of future directors was introduced by the Revolver editorial team in May 2012: Jessica Krummacher ( Totem), Hannes Lang ( Peak), Maximilian Linz ( Das Oberhausen Feeling) and Timo Müller (Morscholz).

In the meantime, an anthology with essays by Revolver authors has been published that helps shape the discourse about cinema: Cinema must be dangerous. Revolver movie book. The best of 14 editions of revolvers. 40 texts and interviews about the film.

In addition to publications in journals and magazines, books have also been published which, in addition to the directors of the Berlin School and the characteristics of their films, are also dedicated to the further development of a German film style that was established in the 1990s and has continued to develop today.

In his book “The Counter-Cinema of the Berlin School” (2013), the author and film scholar Marco Abel deals with the latest developments in German cinema and the influences of the Berlin School as a whole. Your term was initially coined by critics who were primarily supposed to describe a group of young filmmakers from the German Film and Television Academy Berlin . In the meantime, the Berlin School has expanded as a film direction to include a wider range of directors, whose style in turn reflects the style of the original members of the Berlin School. The structure of the book takes up the conventional division of the Berlin school into two waves. The "First Wave" with Thomas Arslan, Christian Petzold and Angela Schanelec as well as the "Second Wave" with Christoph Hochhäusler, Benjamin Heisenberg, Valeska Grisebach, Maren Ade and Ulrich Köhler. Although her films are all set in Germany and deal with contemporary issues in Germany, the films have not had any commercial success at national or international level. This phenomenon and the associated subordination of the filmmakers should be counteracted here through attention. Films that have previously been generally ignored should be marked as such and contrasted with the more popular German cinema.

In his study, Marco Abel examines the similarities between these generations of filmmakers and what distinguishes their films from the mainstream of national German cinema. It is not about the meaning of production or reception, but about a symbolic idea of ​​Germany and the conception of the Berlin School as a possible “counter cinema”. Abel uses Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari's idea of ​​the “minority” ( Minor ) to explain how the films of the Berlin School depict reality - in such a way that viewers neither have to identify with the films, nor from them alienate. This would intensify an experience of reality and deepen the presentation of the respective topic.

Abel recognizes a trend that is not limited to cinematic techniques and can instead be found in common themes. In doing so, he examines how each of these filmmakers participates in this trend and thus creates something that can be assigned to the counter-cinema. The topics include the question of Germany and time itself, in particular the concept of the "future perfect" and the concept of "utopia" or "nowhere" that is rooted in the here and now.

Compared to the New German Cinema of the 1970s and 1980s, the Berlin School pursues different goals and wishes. Thus, according to Abel, the protagonists of the New German Cinema were encouraged to participate in the creation of a new national cinema, which tended to represent Germany in a progressive way. The New German Cinema is therefore trying to present a “better Germany”. The Berlin school, on the other hand, refuses to include Germany on a pre-constituted historical level. It invites the viewer to question the use of the dominant German narratives. The focus here is on the act of so-called reunification , which made the restoration of a German state, a German nation and a German people possible. Stories that the directors question by completely ignoring their terms in order not to be captured by them. Instead, this opened up more fundamental questions, such as the question of the “national”. The Berlin School wants to understand Germany as something that "is not yet" and present its people as still missing, at best as coming.

In summary, the Berlin School can be assigned to a movement of counter-cinema, because it cannot be clearly classified into previously defined cinematic categories - it is neither transnational nor progressive, nor can it be assigned to home or classic auteur cinema , nor to national cinema. Instead, it tends to break through the established boundaries of these categories and, beyond that, takes part in the "utopian struggle" to name Germany. The directors of the Berlin School are forging "a 'small' cinema that explicitly refuses to use its terms while working on its present, in the (utopian) hope [...] of new times that are yet to come." The Berlin School therefore imagines a Germany in a future, perfect tense and harbors a kind of nostalgia for what will have been but not yet. Marco Abel describes the essence of the Berlin School as an abstract feeling that is triggered in the audience, as something invisible, through which a new representation of the present succeeds. It represents a present that does not require recourse to a past. The political aspect of the Berlin School also exists in this different rendering of the present.

reception

  • American filmmaker Miranda July has positive references to director Maren Ade .
  • "Intrusion of reality into the German film" - ( Christoph Hochhäusler about Bungalow by Ulrich Köhler )
  • In 2013, filmmaker Dietrich Brüggemann commented on the work of the Berlin School in his blog: “Artificial dialogues. Still faces. Detailed back views of people. Tough stretched time. Welcome to the world of artistically high quality cinema, welcome to a world of excruciating boredom and piercing pain. "
  • Georg Seeßlen : "I risk a big word: The films of the" Berlin School "try to portray capitalism. As a living space and as a lifetime for people who do not become absorbed in it and do not fulfill it. And as space and time of ghosts. The unfinished business, the unsolved debt. Depicting capitalism when it is actually forbidden - or in some ways impossible - in our storytelling machines is not easy. And it doesn't work without a very unique kind of transcendence : what belongs to the films of the "Berlin School" is that in a way they are also very, very beautiful. "

literature

documentary

  • The Berlin Nouvelle Vague. Documentary film, Germany, 2016, 51:35 min., Script and direction: André Hörmann and Nadya Luer , production: telekult, rbb , arte , first broadcast: January 11, 2017 on arte, synopsis by ARD .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Rüdiger Suchsland : On the term "Berlin School". In: filmzentrale.com , October 2006, see last section below.
  2. ↑ Merten Worthmann: "Enjoy with caution" , Zeit No. 40/2001, September 27, 2001.
  3. ^ Rüdiger Suchsland: "Dangerous Cinema", Traces of the Berlin School In: Filmdienst August 5, 2010 No. 16/2010, p. 45.
  4. ↑ Private homepage of film critic Hans Helmut Prinzler In: Film book review on the "Berlin School", December 2013.
  5. ↑ a b c d e f Cathy Rohnke: The school that isn't - reflections on the “Berlin School”. ( Memento from March 26, 2012 in the Internet Archive ) In: Goethe-Institut , December 2006.
  6. ↑ a b Marcus Seibert (Ed.): Cinema must be dangerous. Revolver movie book. The best of 14 editions of revolvers. 40 texts and interviews about the film. Publishing house of the authors, Frankfurt am Main, 2006, ISBN 978-3-88661-296-3 .
    With contributions by Maren Ade, Barbara Albert, Jens Börner, Jean-Claude Carrière, Katrin Cartlidge, Patrice Chéreau, Jacques Doillon, Jean Douchet, Christopher Doyle, Bruno Dumont, Harun Farocki, Helmut Färber, Dominik Graf, Michael Haneke, Jessica Hausner, Benjamin Heisenberg, Werner Herzog, Christoph Hochhäusler, Romuald Karmakar, Wong Kar-Wai, Abbas Kiarostami, Roland Klick, Alexander Kluge, Harmony Korine, Peter Kubelka, Noémie Lvovsky, Jonas Mekas, Christian Petzold, Jacques Rivette, Éric Rohmer, Ulrich Seidl, Angela Schanelec, Georg Seeßlen, Hans-Jürgen Syberberg, Lars von Trier, Reinhold vorneider, Jeff Wall, Nicolas Wackerbarth, Henner Winckler u. a.
  7. ↑ Cristina Moles Kaupp: Almost without romance. Where does the Berlin school begin and where does it end? In: tip , No. 14, 2006, June 29 - July 12, 2006, pp. 42–43.
  8. ↑ Internet presence of the magazine Revolver , accessed on January 12, 2017.
  9. ↑ Christoph Hochhäusler : Round table in the Red Salon: Revolver live! (29). ( Memento from February 15, 2013 in the web archive archive.today ). In: Volksbühne Berlin , May 7, 2012.
  10. ↑ https://transit.berkeley.edu/2014/tovey-2/
  11. ↑ https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.7722/j.ctt3fgnfg.15?refreqid=excelsior%3A67a9c582bbdcb8f29270fe686a5573d1&seq=1#metadata_info_tab_contents
  12. ↑ https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.7722/j.ctt3fgnfg.15?refreqid=excelsior%3A67a9c582bbdcb8f29270fe686a5573d1&seq=1#metadata_info_tab_contents
  13. ↑ https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.7722/j.ctt3fgnfg.15?refreqid=excelsior%3A67a9c582bbdcb8f29270fe686a5573d1&seq=3#metadata_info_tab_contents
  14. ↑ https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.7722/j.ctt3fgnfg.15?refreqid=excelsior%3A67a9c582bbdcb8f29270fe686a5573d1&seq=14#metadata_info_tab_contents
  15. ↑ Renn Brown: Interview with Miranda July. In: Chud.com - Cinematic Happenings under Development , December 12, 2011, accessed January 12, 2017.
  16. ^ Dietrich Brüggemann : Drive to Hell, Berlin School. In: d-trick.de , February 11, 2013, accessed on January 12, 2017.
  17. ↑ Georg Seeßlen : The anti-narrative machine. A contemporary cinema in the age of the audiovisual oligolopoly or the attempt to understand the "Berlin School". In: der Freitag / filmzentrale.com , September 14, 2007.