German Cinema
Major trends and movements of German film history from the classic period of German Expressionism (Wiene, Lang, Murnau, Pabst) to the Fascist propaganda film (Harlan, Riefenstahl), the post-World War II "rubble films," and finally the rise and fall of New German Cinema (Fassbinder, Kluge, Wenders, Herzog, von Trotta). Issues to be discussed include history in film and film as history, the "aestheticization of politics" in Nazi cinema, "auteurist cinema," German film theory and criticism (Arnheim, Benjamin, Kracauer, Wenders), and finally, film as an instrument of public discourse.