Annie Ring

The Lives of Others (eBook, PDF)

(Das Leben der Anderen)

• Format: PDF

Produktbeschreibung

This study offers a fresh approach to the remarkable German film The Lives of Others (2006), known for its compelling representation of a Stasi surveillance officer and the moral and ethical turmoil that results when he begins spying on a playwright and his actress lover.

Annie Ring analyses the film's cinematography, mise-en-scène and editing, tracing connections with Hollywood movies such as Casablanca and Hitchcock's Torn Curtain in the film's portrayal of an individual rebelling against a brutal dehumanising regime. Drawing on archival sources, including primary research from the Stasi files themselves, as well as Enlightenment philosophies of art and Brecht's theories on theatre dating from his GDR years, she explores the film's strong but much-disputed claims to historical authenticity. She examines the way the film tracks the world-changing political shift that took place at the end of the Cold War - away from the collective dreams of socialism and towards the dreams of the private individual, arguing that this is what makes it at once widely appealing and fascinatingly problematic. In doing so, she highlights why The Lives of Others is a crucial film for thinking at the horizon between film and recent world history.

Produktdetails

• Verlag: Bloomsbury UK
• Seitenzahl: 104
• Erscheinungstermin: 6. Oktober 2022
• Englisch
• ISBN-13: 9781839025327
• Artikelnr.: 64246559

Autorenporträt

Annie Ring is Associate Professor of German and comparative film, literature and cultural theory at UCL, UK. Her research focuses on film, surveillance, technology and the politics of subjectivity. She is author of After the Stasi (2015). She is co-editor of Architecture and Control (2018), Uncertain Archives: Critical Keywords for Big Data (2021) and has contributed to The German Cinema Book (British Film Institute, 2020).

Inhaltsangabe

Acknowledgments Introduction 1. A Contemporary Classic - and a Conservative
One? 2. The Authenticity of a Very Hollywood Film Mode 3. Depicting the
Stasi's Surveillance Regime 4. The Good Spy of East Berlin: Captain Gerd
Weisler 5. Brecht, Performance, and the Politics of an Aesthetic Education
6. 'Sister Art Is/Coming on Stage': Christa- Maria Sieland 7. Success?
Georg Dreyman and German Unification Conclusion Notes Credits Bibliography