German Studies 231 - Topic: German Women Filmmakers

Focus on the discussion and analysis of films by German women directors from Lotte Reiniger, pioneer of animation films, and Leni Riefenstahl, controversial director and mythmaker of the Third Reich, to such trailblazing women directors of the New German Cinema as Margarethe von Trotta, Jutta Bruckner, and Helma Sanders-Brahms. Moreover, we will attempt to determine whether more recent women directors like Doris D'rrie or Caroline Link, including those of migration background like Yasemin Samdereli, developed special (trans)gendered and transnational gazes that led them to focus so frequently on variations of (tragi)comedy in film.