Contemporary Transnational Television and Film
edited by Stephan Ehrig, Benjamin Schaper and Elizabeth Ward
Berghahn Books, 2023
ISBN 978-1-80539-055-8
Publisher’s Website
“This is a state-of-the-art introduction and overview of current issues in German film and, even more particularly, television culture.”
Stephen Brockmann
This volume explores the recent ubiquity of German cultural history in an increasingly transnationalized film and television context. Previously, Germany’s problematic past was regarded as the ‘unique selling point’ of German cinema as an internationally recognizable brand. This volume, in contrast, argues that the thematization of German (cultural) history in film and television of the past fifteen years has radically shifted towards an increasingly profound appreciation of German cultural and intellectual history in the (inter-)national mainstream. The rise of streaming services and an increasingly transnational production scene have changed, modified, and reimagined the narratives of German (cultural) history that have dominated post-war cinema. In this context, German history as well as cultural and intellectual history serve as a creative inventory to inform European and North American narratives which transcend the mere memory of 20th-century terror, thus showcasing a new entertaining and playful approach to German culture and history.
The book is fully Open Access (free to download as a pdf, no registration required) via the publisher’s website.
Elizabeth Ward 