screening the east. heimat, memory and nostalgia in german film since 1989

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This article was downloaded by: [University of Windsor] On: 16 November 2014, At: 00:22 Publisher: Routledge Informa Ltd Registered in England and Wales Registered Number: 1072954 Registered office: Mortimer House, 37-41 Mortimer Street, London W1T 3JH, UK Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television Publication details, including instructions for authors and subscription information: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/chjf20 Screening the East. Heimat, Memory and Nostalgia in German Film since 1989 Reinhard Zachau a a The University of the South, Sewanee Published online: 01 Aug 2012. To cite this article: Reinhard Zachau (2012) Screening the East. Heimat, Memory and Nostalgia in German Film since 1989, Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television, 32:3, 498-500, DOI: 10.1080/01439685.2012.699627 To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/01439685.2012.699627 PLEASE SCROLL DOWN FOR ARTICLE Taylor & Francis makes every effort to ensure the accuracy of all the information (the “Content”) contained in the publications on our platform. However, Taylor & Francis, our agents, and our licensors make no representations or warranties whatsoever as to the accuracy, completeness, or suitability for any purpose of the Content. Any opinions and views expressed in this publication are the opinions and views of the authors, and are not the views of or endorsed by Taylor & Francis. The accuracy of the Content should not be relied upon and should be independently verified with primary sources of information. Taylor and Francis shall not be liable for any losses, actions, claims, proceedings, demands, costs, expenses, damages, and other liabilities whatsoever or howsoever caused arising directly or indirectly in connection with, in relation to or arising out of the use of the Content. This article may be used for research, teaching, and private study purposes. Any substantial or systematic reproduction, redistribution, reselling, loan, sub-licensing, systematic supply, or distribution in any form to anyone is expressly forbidden. Terms & Conditions of access and use can be found at http://www.tandfonline.com/page/terms- and-conditions

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Page 1: Screening the East. Heimat, Memory and Nostalgia in German Film since 1989

This article was downloaded by: [University of Windsor]On: 16 November 2014, At: 00:22Publisher: RoutledgeInforma Ltd Registered in England and Wales Registered Number: 1072954 Registeredoffice: Mortimer House, 37-41 Mortimer Street, London W1T 3JH, UK

Historical Journal of Film, Radio andTelevisionPublication details, including instructions for authors andsubscription information:http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/chjf20

Screening the East. Heimat, Memoryand Nostalgia in German Film since1989Reinhard Zachau aa The University of the South, SewaneePublished online: 01 Aug 2012.

To cite this article: Reinhard Zachau (2012) Screening the East. Heimat, Memory and Nostalgiain German Film since 1989, Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television, 32:3, 498-500, DOI:10.1080/01439685.2012.699627

To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/01439685.2012.699627

PLEASE SCROLL DOWN FOR ARTICLE

Taylor & Francis makes every effort to ensure the accuracy of all the information (the“Content”) contained in the publications on our platform. However, Taylor & Francis,our agents, and our licensors make no representations or warranties whatsoever as tothe accuracy, completeness, or suitability for any purpose of the Content. Any opinionsand views expressed in this publication are the opinions and views of the authors,and are not the views of or endorsed by Taylor & Francis. The accuracy of the Contentshould not be relied upon and should be independently verified with primary sourcesof information. Taylor and Francis shall not be liable for any losses, actions, claims,proceedings, demands, costs, expenses, damages, and other liabilities whatsoever orhowsoever caused arising directly or indirectly in connection with, in relation to or arisingout of the use of the Content.

This article may be used for research, teaching, and private study purposes. Anysubstantial or systematic reproduction, redistribution, reselling, loan, sub-licensing,systematic supply, or distribution in any form to anyone is expressly forbidden. Terms &Conditions of access and use can be found at http://www.tandfonline.com/page/terms-and-conditions

Page 2: Screening the East. Heimat, Memory and Nostalgia in German Film since 1989

Cold War theme as fully or explicitly as the subtitle suggests, but readers familiar withthe current debates on the cultural Cold War can easily supply their own analyticaland contextual frameworks to this material.

DENISE J. YOUNGBLOOD

University of Vermont� 2012 Denise J. Youngblood

Screening the East. Heimat, Memory and Nostalgia in German Filmsince 1989NICK HODGIN

New York/Oxford, Berghahn Books, 2011xþ222 pp., illus., bibliography, filmography, index, £53.00 (cloth)

Screening the East is a treasure trove of East Germany’s largely unknown filmproduction following the fall of the wall in 1989. It offers extensive summaries andinterpretations of movies produced after 1989, and is only the second such attemptafter Leonie Naughton’s 2002 introduction to post-wall film-making, That was the WildEast. Naughton’s ground-breaking volume covered only the first decade after 1989;Hodgin’s Screening the East not only expands the period by another decade but alsoattempts an objective view of the 20-year period since German unification. Naughtonhad been the first to use Heimatfilm for post-wall movies, ‘a regained Heimat for theWest’ that Hodgin extends to the entire Eastern film production. For the averageviewer whose knowledge probably does not reach much beyond Good Bye Lenin(2003), Sonnenallee (Sun Avenue, 1999) and Das Leben der Anderen (The Lives of Others,2006), Screening the East will be a first exploration of East German film from 1990 to2010. Hodgin divides his analysis of close to 200 movies into five sections, ‘East meetsWest’, ‘Lost Landscapes’, ‘Heimat East’, ‘Berlin’, and ‘Good Bye Ostalgie’, each ofwhich are discussed chronologically.

With ‘Heimat’ as the principal theme for the book, Hodgin deliberately chose aloaded concept. He distinguishes between two kinds of East German identities, areturn to the notion of Heimat that praises all non-political traditions of Germany’spast, and a nostalgic celebration of GDR identity. As Heimat had become associatedwith the official GDR state and its symbols (‘Heimat DDR’), a sanctioned concept aslong as it did not contradict the wider socialist project, Hodgin points out thedifference between this ‘top down’ notion of GDR Heimat and the ‘bottom up’ post-wall Heimat identity that can also be seen in many autobiographies written during thenineties, such as Jacob Hein’s 2001 book Mein erstes T-Shirt.

Hodgin starts with the almost unknown 1992 movie Der Brocken, an archetypalEast German film in the traditional Heimat setting, with a widow living in the countryfending off land-grabbing Westerners. A discussion of the widely known film Das warder wilde Osten (Go Trabi Go II, 1992) follows, invoking the Heimat tradition in amodern context. As Naughton had maintained, early post-wall films offer an appealingmix of tradition, solidarity, individual strength, family responsibility and simple

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Page 3: Screening the East. Heimat, Memory and Nostalgia in German Film since 1989

morality against the threat to Heimat by Western exploitation policies. This topic isfurther advanced by Hodgin in the chapter entitled ‘Lost Landscapes’, whose subjectis the damaging effects of unification, i.e. in Helke Misselwitz’ Herzsprung (1992) andin Helma Sanders Brahms’ Apfelbaume (1992), with their quiet beauty of East Germanlandscapes. Also Andreas Dresen’s debut film Stilles Land (1992) is discussed here, afilm showing a provincial theatre troupe rehearsing Waiting for Godot during the Fall ofthe Wall.

In the chapter ‘Heimat East’ Hodgin shows how the American road movie Thelmaand Louise is used as a model for Peter Welz’s Burning Life (1994). Burning Life presentsthe east’s barren landscapes and deserted mines corresponding to East Germanpsychological dispositions in which the protagonist is looking for ways to escape. Oneof the reasons for the lack of success of the movies in this period was their associationwith indolence and drunkenness and their almost complete absence of humor. The bigbreak came with Detlev Buck’s Wir konnen auch anders (1993), which raised the Heimatfilm to a new level by exploring humor and slapstick in a road movie that combinesthe buddy movie with the Western. Buck’s movie became one of the first commercialand critical successes of East German film because it offers a ‘mainstream unificationnarrative’ (p. 112).

In his chapter on Berlin as Heimat, Hodgin focuses on some of the art moviesproduced, such as Dresen’s successful Nachtgestalten (1998), a poetic journey throughBerlin’s nightlife, and Michael Klier’s avantgarde film Ostkreuz (1991) that usesdiscordant instrumentation in its soundtrack. Hodgin compares this film to Rosselini’s1948 Germania anno zero—Deutschland Stunde Null (Germany Year Zero) where Berlinwas imagined as a ghostly and dehumanized city. Hannes Stohr’s Berlin is in Germany(2001) pays homage to Doblin’s Weimar epic Berlin Alexanderplatz with its evocation ofBerlin’s rebuilt spaces presented through the eyes of an ex-convict.

In his concluding chapter, Hodgin discusses the impact of two decades of moviemaking on the current more commercially oriented scene. Movies like theabovementioned Sun Avenue, Good Bye Lenin and The Lives of Others put East Germanmovies on the map. Hodgin’s personal preference is obvious when he criticizes thesemovies as too successful and reveals his favor for the less successful Helden wie wir(1999) as one of the most inventive in post-GDR. Sun Avenue, Hodgin writes, with itsfocus on adolescence provides a less seductive vision of the GDR than Helden wie wirdoes. Even Good Bye Lenin does not find his complete approval for creating animaginary GDR because ‘there was more to the GDR than decor and comfort foods.’As did his successful Wir konnen auch anders, Becker’s film provides a similar experiencewhose appeal lies in Christiane Kerner’s vague belief in ‘good’ socialism that was‘ultimately suppressed in the GDR’. Similarly, Hodgin criticizes The Lives of Others byquoting Andreas Dresen who would have preferred a Stasi film that depicts everydaybetrayal. Yet, despite the author’s obvious preference for dark movies by EastGermans rather than the more entertaining productions by Western directors, thelatter turned out to be the perfect formula for success abroad.

Hodgin concludes that the distinguishing feature of East Germany, its economicdisparity with the West (largely due to the continuing exodus of educated people),coupled with a sense of inferiority, recreated the once vilified Heimat feeling as afoundation for a post-communist society. Hodgin likens this sense of Heimat to BillClinton’s and Timothy Blair’s discourse on small community building. Post-GDR

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Page 4: Screening the East. Heimat, Memory and Nostalgia in German Film since 1989

Heimat, once seen as anachronistic, seems to provide a viable alternative to the‘impersonal and superficial society beyond’, using the sociologist Ferdinand Tonniesterminology of 1887 (Gemeinschaft und Gesellschaft).

Besides occasional misjudgments the book suffers from a shaky theoreticalfoundation. West Germany’s Heimat discourse does not appear in this book, as isevident in the absence of Johannes von Moltke’s groundbreaking study No Place likeHome: locations of Heimat in German cinema (2005). Moltke had shown how Edgar Reitz’West Germany’s Heimat trilogy of 1984–2004 is an attempt to transform the trivialHeimat concept into an emotional space to reveal political tensions. Heimat discourseis also part of the of current globalization discourse.

Hodgin briefly mentions Arjun Appadurai’s important globalization paradigmswithout exploring them further. According to Appadurai, people are shaped bymovies, television, radio, newspaper, by ‘mediascapes’ that create the ‘imaginedworld’ we inhabit, where narratives and images are often a common method toprovide information and to form opinions about the place or culture we live in(Modernity at Large: cultural dimensions of globalization, 1996). Increasingly, we areforced to see our lives through the prism of possible identities created by mass mediathat offer ‘something more elementary, more contingent, and more real than life’ tocreate a comfortable place to be. This contested space between the local and theglobal provides the narrative for East German movies about people leaving theirsheltered world and opening up to the West and beyond. These movies establish a‘homescape’, a Heimat needed to adjust to a new life in the cold climate ofglobalization. Since Hodgin does not provide these connections, he missed animportant opportunity to elevate this study from a German framework into a workwith a truly global appeal.

REINHARD ZACHAU

The University of the South, Sewanee� 2012 Reinhard Zachau

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