Film & Media Studies

The course covers the variety of cinematic representations of National Socialism and the Holocaust, including an overview of the different filmic approaches used to represent and refer to the Third Reich. Students examine the most intense cinematic production phase of German history, which is the time between Hitler’s coming to power in 1933 and the end of the Second World War in 1945. Students examine movies by filmmakers such as Riefenstahl and Steinhoff, who created propaganda films glorifying the Nazi movement, as well as movies by Chaplin and Lubitsch who sought to fight the Nazi regime with satirical strategies. Students then analyze the equally wide spectrum of movie production after 1945. Some of the films discussed include: TRIUMPH OF THE WILL, TO BE OR NOT TO BE, SHOAH, SCHINDLER'S LIST, TRAIN OF LIFE, and INGLOURIOUS BASTARDS. Assessment is based on participation in working groups and a final exam.

The course covers the most important developments in the history of the media concerning how historical studies are conducted today in theory and practice. Special emphasis is placed on how digital tools and digital sources influence the conditions for historical inquiries. The course introduces methods and tools for digital history, e.g. text analysis and data visualization.

This course explores what makes Japanese film directors not mere metteur-en-scene (director) but auteurs (authors) by surveying the visual forms and styles of their films as well as analyzing their preferred narrative concerns, contents and themes. It is not difficult to find auteurs in the Japanese cinema world: Mizoguchi Kenji, Ozu Yasujiro, Kurosawa Akira, and Oshima Nagisa are a few of the representative Japanese auteurs who, commanding absolute control over most stages of film-making, managed to create films with superlative characteristics in narrative, theme and visual style. Auteurs are film directors who have imprinted their own signature on their work. By the end of this course, the class is expected to recognize the signature of each auteur.