Berlin replayed : cinema and urban nostalgia in the postwall era / Brigitta B. Wagner.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Wagner, Brigitta B., 1978-

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Berlin (Germany)--In motion pictures.

Berlin (Germany).

Berlin (Germany)--Civilization--20th century.

Cities and towns in motion pictures.

Civilization.

Motion pictures.

Germany--Berlin.

Physical Description:

x, 299 pages : illustrations, maps ; 26 cm

Place of Publication:

Minneapolis : University of Minnesota Press, [2015]

Summary:

Scarred by the Second World War, divided during the Cold War, and turned into a massive construction site in the early postwall years, Berlin has dramatically reinvented itself in the new millennium. Film has served a neglected but important function in this renaissance. In Berlin Replayed, Brigitta B. Wagner traces how old and new films set in Berlin created a collective urban nostalgia for the city's best and most conciliatory pasts in the face of its renewed purpose as the all-German capital Exploring films such as Walter Ruttmann's Berlin: Symphony of a Great City, Wim Wenders's Wings of Desire, Tom Tykwer's Run Lola Run, and Wolfgang Becker's Good Bye, Lenin!, the book illustrates how film has repeatedly remade the image of the city. Wagner focuses on four key periods: the golden 1920s, when the City was a major filmmaking center; the prewall 1950s, when Berlin had two ideologically opposed film industries; the politically transformative late 1980s and early 1990s; and the hyped start of the twenty-first century. By showing how films have helped revive memories of the "good" Berlin and, by extension, the "good" Germany, Wagner reveals the underappreciated but powerful role film has played in the process of unifying Germany's historical experience and bridging its physical and political divisions. Book jacket.

Contents:

Introduction: Auf wiedersehen, Berlin!

Remake: Berlin symphonies and the myth of the weltstadt

Generation: a 1950s place for us

Virtuality: cinema, archive, and the interactive map of Potsdamer Platz

Orientation: geographical didacticism and the X-films of new Berlin

Epilogue: Berlin returns, again.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

9780816691715

0816691711

9780816691746

0816691746

OCLC:

896954148