Movement and Performance in Berlin School Cinema (eBook)

Ultimately, Movement and Performance in Berlin School Cinema expands the methodological and disciplinary boundaries of film studies by offering new ways of articulating and understanding movement in cinema.

1. This book explores the development and characteristics of a contemporary film movement in Germany. It is a strong contribution to IUP's New Directions in National Cinemas and also dialogues nicely with the recent IUP title by Lida Oukaderova that explored movement in the cinema of the Soviet thaw.
2. It is one of few books on the film movement "The Berlin School" and it bridges film theory and performance theory within the research. The author uses this case study to provide an argument for the broader incorporation of performance studies into cinema and media scholarship.
3. This book is written by an up-and-coming author whose work demonstrates a high quality of scholarship and originality.

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Through a study of the contemporary German film movement the Berlin School, Olivia Landry examines how narrative film has responded to our highly digitalized and mediatized age, not with a focus on stasis and realism, but by turning back to movement, spectacle, and performance. She argues that a preoccupation with presence, liveness, and affect-all of which are viewed as critical components of live performance-can be found in many of the films of the Berlin School. Challenging the perception that the Berlin School is a sheer adherent of "e;slow cinema,"e; Landry closely analyzes the use of movement, dynamism, presence, and speed in a broad selection of films to show how filmmakers such as Christian Petzold, Angela Schanelec, Thomas Arslan, and Christoph Hochhausler invoke the pulse of the kinesthetic and the tangibly affective. Her analysis draws on an array of film theories from early materialism to body theories, phenomenology, and contemporary affect theories. Arguing that these theories readily and energetically forge a path from film to performance, Landry traces a trajectory between the two through which live experience, presence, spectacle, intersubjectivity, and the body in motion emerge and powerfully intersect. Ultimately, Movement and Performance in Berlin School Cinema expands the methodological and disciplinary boundaries of film studies by offering new ways of articulating and understanding movement in cinema.