Andreas Dresen: (4 Contemporary German Writers and Filmmakers)

Andreas Dresen is a leading European filmmaker whose /uvre now spans three decades and includes some of the most acclaimed German films of recent times, such as Halbe Treppe (Grill Point, 2002), Sommer vorm Balkon (Summer in Berlin, 2005) and Halt auf freier Strecke (Stopped on Track, 2011). The essays collected in this volume by leading scholars from the USA, UK and Ireland place him in the tradition of auteur cinema while emphasising his roots in the pre-1990 film industry of DEFA in the GDR. Dresen works with an established team of performers, technicians and scriptwriters, uses improvisation and non-professional actors, and makes music and song an integral component of many of his films. He is a scholar-filmmaker who pushes at the boundaries of his chosen modes and genres (documentary, neo-realism, films about films or literary adaptation); he is socially committed, casting a Brechtian eye on interpersonal encounters in neoliberal environments; and he is always interested to tell universal stories from the localities he knows best, the working-class milieus of Germany's east.

Table of Contents:
Contents: Julian Preece: Introduction - Julian Preece/Andreas Dresen: "Every time a film gets made, an amazing miracle has occurred": Interview with Andreas Dresen - Andreas Dresen: Der falsche Kino-Osten / The Wrong Eastern Cinema - Julian Preece: Self-Reflexivity and Films within Films: From Stilles Land (1992) to Whisky mit Vodka (2009) via Halbe Treppe (2002) and Sommer vorm Balkon (2005) - Reinhild Steingrover: Alternative GDR History in Raus aus der Haut (1997) - Stephen Brockmann: Shaping the Nation and the New Capital on the Eve of the Millennium: Nachtgestalten (1999) - Rosemary Stott: Exploring the East German Past and the DEFA Film Legacy in Die Polizistin (2000) - Helen Hughes: Coming to Terms with the Present: Andreas Dresen's Wichmann Films (2003/2012) - Jean E. Conacher: Women at Work: Reflections on Social Identity and the Private Self in Die Polizistin (2000), Willenbrock (2005) and Steigerlied (2013) - Brigid Haines: Connecting with the Real: Death, Dying and Displacement in Andreas Dresen's Halt auf freier Strecke (2011) and Michael Haneke's Amour (2012) - Julian Preece: Visions of the Wende in Adaptations of Contemporary Fiction by Jurek Becker, Christoph Hein and Clemens Meyer - Mary-Elizabeth O'Brien: Lost at Home: Als wir traumten (2015), Liminal Space and GDR Cinema Tradition.

About the Author :
Julian Preece is Professor of German at Swansea University and author and editor of numerous books on twentieth- and twenty-first-century German literature. He is the director of the Swansea Centre for Contemporary German Culture. Nick Hodgin is Lecturer in German at the University of Sheffield and has published widely on East German culture, especially film. His new projects include a cultural history of the GDR, essays on East German architecture and on documentary film culture of the Cold War.

Review :
" Andreas Dresen belongs to a select group of leading German filmmakers whose successful career unfolded after the fall of the Berlin Wall. This collection of essays, the first focused entirely on the by now already extensive oeuvre of the DEFA-trained filmmaker, [...] is an enticing invitation to contemplate the many important contributions Dresen has made to contemporary German cinema and enquire into a body of work that offers incisive commentary on the past 25 years of German history and the human condition more generally. " (Professor Martin Kagel, University of Georgia)