New German Cinema

In 1962, at Oberhausen, twenty-six young film-makers signed a manifesto declaring daddy's cinema dead and demanding public funding: the Federal Republic eventually granted it, and a decade of demanding films followed. Fassbinder shot forty films in thirteen years and told Germany through its households, Herzog dragged a steamboat over a mountain for a single shot, Schlöndorff filmed a child who refuses to grow up under nazism, Wenders set angels above a Berlin still cut in two.

works 6

• NovelThe Tin DrumDie BlechtrommelGünter Grass · 1959Danzig and then the Rhineland, from the beginning of the century to the fifties, told by a man who remained the size of a three-year-old child.Literature
• CinemaYesterday GirlAbschied von gesternAlexander Kluge · 1966A young woman who has crossed from East to West goes from one institution to another, in a narrative made of fragments and commentary.Cinema
• CinemaAguirre, the Wrath of GodAguirre, der Zorn GottesWerner Herzog · 1972A sixteenth-century Spanish expedition, lost on an Amazonian river, where an officer refuses to turn back.Cinema
• CinemaThe Marriage of Maria BraunDie Ehe der Maria BraunRainer Werner Fassbinder · 1979Germany from 1943 to the years of the economic miracle, seen through a woman who grows rich while waiting for her husband.Cinema
• CinemaThe Tin DrumDie BlechtrommelVolker Schlöndorff · 1979Danzig, from the interwar years to the war, seen through a child who refused to grow up and will not let go of his drum.Cinema
• CinemaWings of DesireDer Himmel über BerlinWim Wenders · 1987West Berlin two years before the fall of the Wall, seen by angels who hear everything but cannot act.Cinema