Women and the New German Cinema (Questions for Feminism) - Hardcover

Knight, Julia

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 086091352X ISBN 13: 9780860913528

Publisher: Verso, 1992

Synopsis

There were virtually no women film directors in germany until the 1970s. today there are proportionally more than in any other film-making country6, and their work has been extremely influential. Directors like Margarethe von Trotta, Helma Sanders-Brahms, Ulrike Ottinger and Helke Sander have made a huge contribution to feminist film culture, but until now critical consideration of New German Cinema in Britain and the United States has focused almost exclusively on male directors such as Rainer Werner Fassbinder and Wim Wenders.

In Women and the New German Cinema Julia Knight examines how restrictive social, economic and institutional conditions have compounded the neglect of the new women directors. Rejecting the traditional auteur approach, she explores the principal characteristics of women’s film-making in the 1970s and 1980s, in particular the role of the women’s movement, the concern with the notion of a ‘feminine aesthetic’, women’s entry into the mainstream, and the emergence of a so-called post-feminist cinema.

This timely and comprehensive study will be essential reading for everyone concerned with contemporary cinema and feminism.

About this title

About the Author

Julia Knight is married with two children and lives with the world s daftest dog, who is shamelessly ruled by the writer s three obligatory cats. She lives in Sussex, England, and when not writing she likes motorbikes, watching wrestling or rugby, and killing pixels in MMOs. She is incapable of being serious for more than five minutes in a row.

From Library Journal

The new German cinema of West Germany in the 1960s and 1970s is usually defined as the work of a select group of male film directors, including Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Werner Herzog, Alexander Kluge, and others. However, there is also a group of fine German female filmmakers of the same generation, whose films bear the same intense concern for sociopolitical questions and alternative images that are the hallmarks of their male colleagues. Yet their work is critically ignored or marginalized, despite the fact that during this period West Germany had proportionally more women filmmakers than any other film-producing country. The author details the political, social, economic, and institutional conditions she believes led to this neglect. Knight argues that these women gave rise to a whole feminist film culture and produced a critically acclaimed women's cinema. This book covers new territory, but, as a scholarly endeavor written from a feminist viewpoint, it is recommended for academic and subject collections only.
- Marianne Cawley, Kingwood Branch Lib., Tex.
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: Verso
• Publication date: 1992
• ISBN 10: 086091352X
• ISBN 13: 9780860913528
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 232