Research Paper on "German Cinema and Feminism"

Research Paper 6 pages (2203 words) Sources: 6 Style: MLA

[EXCERPT] . . . .

In The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant, the female protagonist Petra, enters a sadomasochism relationship with Marlene who in the end leaves Petra. This sordid, lesbian love affair is filled with heavy emotion and sexuality that is hallmark of the exhibitionist sexuality of women in film. Although it is a great film, it does not develop its female characters in a way that does not associate them with sex, but rather makes the apartment, and the things the women wear a focal point.

New German cinema through films like The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant, exposed an area of film that often gets ignored, and that is homosexuality. "An exploration of the concept of 'post-queer' through reinterpreting New German Cinema (NGC) as post-traumatic cinema processing the trauma of the defeat of the Third Reich, reveals the singular complexity of the conflict between the corpus and Nazi Germany's past" (Morag 472) Because the conflict of World War II was so impactful among the population of Germany, films of that nature were often used to express a more complex side of Germans and Germany as a whole.

Germany was going through an identity crisis during this time and women suffered because of it. An example of this is Helke Sander. Even after her success with The All-Round Reduced Personality (1977), she could not secure funding for her second film. Yet male directors like Sander, who had been making documentaries and shorts for over a decade before she began her first feature, had an easier time acquiring funding. There was, for lack of a better word, a need for, within new German cinema, to categorize filmmakers and films as artistic and in doing so limiting the potential credit female directors and filmmakers could get since they were often never considered artists.

Unfortunately women had a hard time producing and acting in films during that time. If they were not receiving due praise in their films, they were made to perform overly sexualized roles. It was often a struggle for women to truly emerge or forge an identity through new German cinema. And because of this, feminism in Germany and especially in new German cinema grew. It was in these experiences that a plethora of inspiration and action was birthed.

In conclusion, new German cinema became an artistic style of cinema. Filmmakers like Kluge often worked in small groups and often had to write their own scripts, produce the films, get the funding, cast the actors, and direct the film all while attempting to provide quality films to the audience. It was a hard endeavor that women filmmakers took part of. But instead of giving praise and status of artist to female directors and filmmakers, their projects were considered more of a genre piece.

It is not to say women did not make progress in the world of German cinema, but because of the insidious past of World War II, German men felt a loss of self and identity that they partly took out on women. Still women filmmakers made excellent films within this time period that showed female experience as well as what it meant to be a woman within a patriarchal society. And because the climate of new German cinema was overly objectifying of women and women's sexuality, feminism had to take hold in women filmmaking. This was in order to show the world and the audience that women's experience should be recognized and should be shown in order to get a deeper understanding of life for women and the general atmosphere surrounding women in a post-World War II Germany. Feminism brought the female experience, the plight of women in Germany to light within the new German cinema movement. It helps showcase the world from a woman's perspective.

References

Baer, Hester. Dismantling the Dream Factory. New York: Berghahn Books, 2009. Print.

Knight, Julia. New German Cinema. London: Wallflower, 2004. Print.

Leslie, E. 'Cinema and Experience: Siegfried Kracauer, Walter Benjamin and Theodor W. Adorno.'.Screen 53.3 (2012): 318-321. Web.

McCabe, Janet. Feminist Film Studies. London: Wallflower, 2004. Print.

Morag, Raya. 'Post-Trauma, Post-Queer: The Hitlerian Imago and New German Cinema'. New Review of Film and Television Studies 9.4 (2011): 472-492. Web.

Rentschler, E. 'Cinema… READ MORE

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