Original language | English |
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Title of host publication | The Palgrave Encyclopedia of Urban Literary Studies |
Editors | Jeremy Tambling |
Place of Publication | London |
Publisher | Palgrave Macmillan |
Number of pages | 9 |
Edition | 1st |
ISBN (Electronic) | 9783319624198 |
ISBN (Print) | 9783319624181, 9783319624204 |
Publication status | Published - 27 Jan 2022 |
Abstract
Since the early days of German film, Berlin captivated filmmakers. Its energy, creativity, and relentless transformations became central to the construction of a historical imagination of modernity and a German national identity. In 1945, as the former capital of a defeated criminal regime, divided and disputed by two world-systems, Berlin became an ideal cinematic subject to underpin cultural constructions of identity and alterity in postwar Germany. While the ruined city of the early postwar offered a medium to address the Nazi past and its legacy of destruction, the reconstructing city allowed the Allies first and the two German states later to parade their achievements and promote their respective ideologies. The cinematic Berlin of the postwar, caught up as it was in the escalating confrontation between East and West, responded to a large extent to the strategic utopian and dystopian visions that these political ideologies crafted.
Keywords
- Berlin
- Rubble films
- DEFA
- German-German relations
- Postwar cinema
- identity