New German Cinema and Its Global Contexts

Rediscovering a momentous cinema movement, its canonization, and its recasting through global discourse.

The last of the so-called new waves in film, New German Cinema of the 1970s and early 1980s represents much more than a national phenomenon; it impacted and was influenced by films from around the world. Filmmakers such as the famous troika of Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Werner Herzog, and Wim Wenders, as well as directors, such as Margarethe von Trotta, Helma Sanders-Brahms, and Helke Sander, and Volker Schloendorff received much critical acclaim both in Germany and abroad. These directors, their films, and their often-infamous reputations constitute one of the most intriguing and consequential legacies of European cinema and world culture. In this groundbreaking view of New German Cinema through a global lens, editors Marco Abel and Jaimey Fisher approach these celebrated years of German art film from diverse and innovative perspectives. Contributors explore these films' transnational circuits of production, distribution, and exhibition, as well as how the films were made and received, thereby inviting us to reexamine the roots of what New German Cinema was and imagine what it might yet become.