Fluent Essays

Please read the following requirements carefully，There are three assignments.Before you begin, Please watch Margarethe von Trotta and Volker Schlöndorff. Lost Honor of Katharina Blum (1975) .1. Please view this clip https://uci.yuja.com/V/Video?v=1112256&node=416849...from the opening sequence of The Lost Honor of Katharina Blum (1975).What is the relationship between the film’s camera position and the camera within the scene? Where does the relationship between these two cameras place the film’s audience and shape the viewer’s understanding of the film? (250 words)2. In her essay, Gerhardt points to this scene https://uci.yuja.com/V/Video?v=1112254&node=416848... and suggests at least two possible interpretations of the camera perspective: The wide-angle shot allows the viewer to see the numerous police officers, who move between the camera and Katharina, searching her apartment for evidence. The shot could draw on the viewers empathy, as Katharina is forced to undress in front of the officers, all of whom, except for the woman who accompanied her, are male. Or it could put the viewer in a voyeuristic position, watching her undress (page 21).How do you interpret this scene? What does it say about the films representation of acts of surveillance, of gazing at others and placing them under scrutiny? (250 words) 3. As Gerhardt observes in her essay, the film closes with the journalist’s funeral and “an address in which the speaker states the shots fired hit not only Tötges [the journalist] but also the freedom of the press and democracy in general. The talk serves as a rallying call to uphold journalistic rights, without engaging or putting into question the dubious methods used to gather information or his ethical violations” (pages 15-6). Based on your viewing of the film, how does this ending affirm or subvert the film’s depiction of the relationship between the media, state security forces, and democratic governance? (500 words) And there are some Lectures: https://uci.yuja.com/V/Video?v=1113503&node=417108...https://uci.yuja.com/V/Video?v=1113493&node=417106...https://uci.yuja.com/V/Video?v=1113506&node=417109... christina_gerhardt_how_violence_comes_about_and_to_what_it_can_lead__lost_honor_.pdf Unformatted Attachment Preview Christina Gerhardt, Screening the Red Army Faction (Bloomsbury 2018) 3 How Violence Comes about and to What It Can Lead: The RAF, Surveillance, and the German Autumn in Cinema, 1966-78 If the decade of the long sixties (1957-72) marks one of the most incredible histo1ical mptures world\\�de mth changes demanded at work, the university, school, and home, the decade of the long seventies (1967-82) showed a reb·eat to the domestic sphere and was a watershed for the rise in secmity discourse, both as a result of the laws passed and surveillance apparatuses implemented.! Near the outset of this long decade, in 1969, the Social Democratic Party (SPD, Sozialdemokratische Partei Deutsch/ands) was in power under Chancellor Willy Brandt (1969-74), followed by Helmut Schmidt (SPD, 1974-82); by the long decades end, the chancellorship returned to the Chtistian Democratic Union (CDU, Christlich Demokratische Union). While West Genuanys political and legal systems sought to counteract terro1ism by ratifying legislation and developing security systems,i cinematic representations of terro1ism focused mainly on two issues. First, at the beginning of the long 1970s, students of the then newly established Gennan Film and Tele,�on Academy Berlin (dffb, Deutsche Film- and Femsehakademie Berlin) picked up on the late 1960s discourse about the consistently hostile depictions of tl1e student movements in media, especially of the Sptinger press, discussed in Chapter 2, and engaged it in their films. Second and subsequently, 1970s New German Cinema -coupling this concern mth tl1e ratification of the numerous repressive laws and increased se­ cmity apparatuses of the state-noted the heightened surveillance and atmosphere of fear, and questioned the relationship among institutions of power, such as mechanisJns of governance, jmidical institutions, and corporate media.:! The laws that were passed over the course of the 1970s had created an increasingly tense political environment. On May 30, 1968, the Emergency Laws (Notstandsgesetze), a stipulation 1 of the occupying Western Allies after the Second World War and first drafted in 1958, were ratified.4 Initially, the SPD had taken a firm stance against the proposed laws. But, as argued in Chapter 1, in the 1959 Godesberg Program and onward over the course of the 1960s, the SPDs politics slid across the political spectrum to the right. By 1966 the SPD changed its polit­ ical course to such an extent that it formed a Grand Coalition with the conservative CDU and signed off on the laws. Social movements had consistently protested the ratification since they allowed the suspension of civil liberties, permitting the government to intercept personal mail or telephone communications when a state of emergency was declared. Yet as historian Josef Foschepoth argues in Uberwachtes Deutsch/and (Surveilled Germany), this type of intercep­ tion of communications had taken place in West Germany since its founding, at the insistence of the occupying allied forces, in particular, the United States and the United Kingdom.5 Additional new legislation placed civil servants under particular scmtiny. On January 28, 1972, the West German government passed the Basic Principles on the Question of Anti­ Constitutional Personnel in the Public Service (Die Grundsiitze ziir Frage der ve,fassungs­ feindlichen Kriifte im offentlichem Dienst), known as theAnti-Radical Decree (Radikalen­ erlass) in common parlance and as theCareer Ban (Berufsverbot) by its critics.§ This law allowed firing of ch�) servants who expressed opinions deemed to stand in opposition to the West German constitution (to be ve1fassungswidrig), which, as a direct consequence of the fascist era, states explicitly that one cannot threaten the existence of the state as a democracy. Moreover, indicative of the new Cold War era, membership in a political party, such as the German Communist Party (DKP, Deutsche Kommunistische Parter), reestablished in 1968, constituted grounds for a questionable allegiance to the constitution.z As a result of this law, which is still in effect in some German states, intelligence agencies checked the political beliefs of about 3.5 million persons and passed on the names of 35,000 suspect applicants to hiring authorities, who barred approximately 2,250 applicants for political reasons. In addition, 2000 to 2100 public servants were subject to disciplinary proceedings, and 256 were dismissed.§. The ratification of the Emergency Laws in 1968 and the Professional Ban in 1972 kicked off a decade of heightened state security.9 This state of security was also in evidence in tl1e ramped up federal agencies. The Federal Criminal Office (BKA, Bundeskriminalamt) tripled its staff. Over the course of the 1970s, the BKAs efforts to combat terrorism were centralized and expanded considerably under Horst Herold, who directed the agency from 1971 to 1981 and was the main figure associated mtl1 the states security efforts.lJ! In 1971, the taskforce on terrorism (S011derko111111issio11 Terrorismus) was set up.!! Alfred Klaus played a key role in its founding and its focus on the Red Army Fae2 tion (RAF). He was known for visiting the family of the Red Anny Faction members, in order to get a sense of their familial background. In 1972 Herold, nicknamed Commissar Computer, consolidated and computerized criminal technology and research, establishing a database, the INPOL (information system of the police), which located the data dragnet (Raste1fahnd11ng) at the BKA. The database penuitted gathered data to be so1ted for specific clues found in re­ lationship to RAF members-for example, the tendency to use a fake name on leases or to pay rent and utility bills in cash rather than through a bank transfer-against the patterns of other people in an attempt to filter and track down fmther members. In 1975, a bureau dedicated to fighting te!1orism was established within the BKA and headed by Gerhard Boeden. Additionally, the elite countertel1orism taskforce unit, the GSG 9 (Grenzsc/111tzgr11ppe 9 or Border Protection Group 9), was set up in response to the hostage c1isis at the 1972 Olympics in Munich, in which eight members of the Palestinian terro1ist group Black Septemberll took eleven Israeli athletes hostage. They demanded that 234 Palestinian p1isoners held in Israel as well as Andreas Baader, Gudmn Ensslin, Ubike Meinhof, and others, such as Okamoto Kozo (Japanese Red Anny),!.3 be freed.!4 In the ensuing standoff witl1 the West Genuan police, all eleven hostages, one police officer, and five of the eight terro1ists were killed..!!i In response, the West Gennan Ministry of tl1e Interior not only established the GSG 9 but also tiiggered the Blitish and the French to establish elite counte1terrorism teams of their own..l!i The GSG 9, still extant, trains specifically to fight terrorism, disarm bombs, and free hostages; and it can, �th permission of the host countly, be deployed in other countries. Over the course of the 1970s, the GSG 9 would play a cmcial role in the increasing number of hijackings and hostage c1ises, for example, in the liberation of hostages from the Lufthansa jet Landshut hijacked by RAF ter­ r01ists to Mogadishu in 1977 dming the events of German Autumn. Not only the Professional Ban but also numerous laws ratified in the decade between 1967 and 1977 increased federal scrutiny of political ,�ews, in pa1ticular those deemed to be sedi­ tious. In 1976, Section 88a of the Criminal Code was passed, making it a crime to challenge or advocate a challenge to the West Genuan constitution, since it established and guaranteed the democratic order. In October of 1976, Section 129 of the Climinal Code, which banned fonning, promoting, or pa1ticipating in a climinal organization, was expanded to Section 129a, making it a crime to fonn, support, or promote a domestic terrorist organization.!2 And in 1976, Section 130a of the Criminal Code was passed, making it a c1ime to \\�ite, publish, or distribute texts advocating violence. Taken together, these laws created and added to the starkly bifurcated political climate characterizing 1970s West Germany.!l! In light of tl1e terro1ist attacks that took place dming 3 this decade, some believed the best way to protect the democracy was to turn to an increas­ ingly authoritarian government, continuing the concept of a militant democracy (streitbare Demokratie), which the CDU championed between 1949 and 1969.!.!l For others, the laws passed did not strengthen but rather undermined the democracy and the civil libe1ties it should accord its residents. Justified or not, the laws and the ramped up security apparatus-which included increased police sweeps, street roadblocks for identification paper checks and car searches, police presence on public transportation, as well as federal information-gathering and storing in a centralized databank-led to an increasingly tense atmosphere in West Ger­ many over the course of the 1970s. As Jeremy Varon argues in Bringing the War Home: 11,e Weather Underground, the Red Army Faction and the Revolutionary Violence ofthe 1960s and the 1970s, What people remember about the era is typically not only the pervasive fear of terrorist violence but also the tremendous constriction of thought and feeling caused by height­ ened demands for loyalty to the state, enforced, in part, by repression.2° Cinema of what I am calling the long seventies (1967-82) shows visible signs of this constriction and fear,l! and a shift in debates around terrorism. In the late 1960s, early films of the dffb picked up on discourses discussed in Chapter 2 and focused on the corporate medias depiction of student movements. By the early 1970s, New German Cinema films marked the change in politics and discourse: while they still considered the role of media, a new preoccu­ pation with surveillance mechanisms, a heightened state of security, and its effects on personal lives had come to the fore. As will be discussed subsequently, these twin considerations of media and surveillance man­ ifest thematically and aesthetically in the mid-decade film, directed by Volker Schlondorff and Margarethe von Trotta, Lost Honor of Katharina Blum (1975). Toward the end of this decade, Germany in Autumn (1978), created by eleven New German Cinema directors, traced the im­ pact of the decades repression on media and on personal lives. dftb Films of the Late 1960s: Protest Move­ ments and Media Coverage In the late 1960s, as the social movements were approaching their peak, the German Film and Television Academy Berlin, or dffb, was established in 1966 in West-Berlin at the front lines of the uprisings.gg As a result, students of the early dffb often engaged its main preoccupations, focusing, among other things, on tl1e 1960s consistently hostile depictions of social movements 4 in corporate media, especially of the Springer press. Not only did the students concentrate on the uprisings thematically, they also acted in solida1ity.1.1 When the Emergency Laws were passed, students occupied the dffb from May 30 to June 10, 1968, renaming it the Dziga Vertov School. 111ese students were expelled on November 18, 1968, for trespassing and occupying the school.� According to one account, a higher court later dismissed the decision and reinstituted the students 1ight to attend the dffb.£5 The dffb was founded, in part, in response to the Oberhausen Manifesto, an appeal put for­ ward by twenty-six directors on Febmary 28, 1962, that demanded, not explicitly but de facto, a radical revamping of the West Gennan television and film industry, its funding mechanisms, as well as the establishment of schools.� In 1962, Oberhausen signatories Alexander Kluge and Detten Schleienuacher, together with Edgar Reitz, cofounded West Germanys first film school, the Ulm Institute for Film Design (Institut fiir Filmgestaltung Ulm) at the Hochsch11/e fiir Gestaltimg Ulm (School of Design Ulm). As Eric Rentschler, Wliting about the Oberhausen Manifesto on the occasion of its fiftieth anniversary, pointed out, Despite substantial opposi­ tion, the initiative proved a valuable catalyst with significant and lasting results, including, but not limited to the founding of film academies in Ulm, West Berlin and Munich.12 The Uni­ versity of Television and Film in Munich (hff, Hochsch11/efiir Femsehen 1111d Film Miinchen), which was established on July 19, 1966, officially opened on November 6, 1967.28 While the so­ cial movements of the late 1960s discussed in Chapter 1 have become canonical for histolies of the era, and New Genuan Cinema has become memo1ialized as the best-known post-Second World War West German school of filmmaking, and across the border in France, the earlier French New Wave films directed by Jean-Luc Godard and the subsequent Left Bank cinema of Cluis Marker and Agnes Varda is tied inextlicably to the social movements, West Germanys connection to its own peliod of expelimental or avant-garde filmmaking has been radically overlooked.&!! Yet it is manifest in the early work of the dffb, where experiments with fonn and engagement with politics converged. Revisiting them, on the one hand, pro,�des a new angle on the political preoccupations of the time, and, on the other hand, contributes a new reading to West Genuan film history of the 196os.3Q On September 17, 1966, West-Berlin mayor Willy Brandt and founding codirectors Erwin Leiser and Heinz Rathsack cut the Iibbon, thereby officially opening the dffb. Of over 800 ap­ plicants, 35 were selected for the dffbs inaugural class.3.! It included Jorg-Michael Baldenius, Johannes Beringer, Hartmut Bitomsky, Karl Dieter Briel, Gerd Conradt, Lutz Eisholz, Hamn Farocki, Bernd Fielder, Wolf Grenun, Frank Griitzbach, 1110mas Hartwig, Holger Meins, Hans­ Riidiger Minow, Thomas Mitscherlich, Wolfgang Petersen, Helke Sander, Daniel Schmid, 5 Gerry Schumm, Irena Vrkljan, Max Wilutzki, and Christian Ziewer.ll Fassbinder, whose work will be discussed in greater detail further on in this chapter, was turned down in 1966 with the assessment that he lacked the requisite training/Knowledge Films: insufficient.33 His subse­ quent application in 1967 was also rejected. Accepted students of the early dffb included future RAF member Holger Meins and future June 2 Movement member Philip Werner Sauber. Along with Ha1tmut Bitomsky, Hamn Farocki was among the dffbs first generations best­ known directors. Farocki remained affiliated with the school, influential in his o,�11 right and through his work ,�ith the contemporary Berlin School director, Christian Petzold, up to his death in 2014.&1 Although many of Farockis early films of the late 1960s thematically relate directly to the social movements, his first film, Zwei Wege (1\vo Ways or 1\vo Paths, 1966), produced for German television, engages conceptually with the late 1960s discourse about how to read corporate media depictions of the student uprisings. Farockis film, stylistically, offers two ways to interpret-in this case, an image or an oil painting-through its use of close­ ups, breaking down the image \\�th the camera, as Tilman Baumgii1tel described the film on Farockis website.35 While the film dovetails with Farockis later oeuvre-for example, as Baumgartel states, Farocki would return to questions of how to read images in his later essay films of the 1980s, Wie man sieht (How One Sees, 1986) and Bilder der Welt (Images of the World, 1988}-it also illuminates the eras preoccupation with competing narratives about then occurring events. Vitally, Farockis film underscores the importance of aesthetics or form, in tandem 1,�th thematics, which informs the subsequent dffb films discussed. One of his best-known films of the era, Die �Vorte des Vorsitzenden (The Words of the Chairman, 1967), consists of quotations from Maos Little Red Book.3§ Pages from the book are torn out and while Helke Sander (off screen) reads quotations from Marshal Lin Biaos introduction, the pages are folded into little paper airplanes, affLxed to a pin, and launched. They land in the soup plates of two persons seated at a white tablecloth draped and well-set table. The two people wear the paper bags over their heads, mentioned in Chapter 1, adorned with the images of the Shah of Iran and his wife, and worn by students at the June 2, 1967, demonstrations (see Figures 1.1 and 1.2). The film was created in October 1967, after the June 2, 1967, demonstrations, which Farocki, writing about the film on his website, states he had missed, as he had just departed on a ship bound for Venezuela, in one of the numerous signs of the movements international ties.32 The idea for this film, he states, came to him aboard the ship. In the film, he writes, the words metaphorically become weapons. TI1e film was screened regularly at teach-ins in West-Berlin in the late 1960s and garnered intense if not necessarily uniform responses.al! It aired on June 27, 1969, on the West German tele�sion channel ZDF. 6 Helke Sanders film Brecht die Macht der Manipulateure (Break or Stop the Power of the Manipulators, 1968),39 funded by Suomen Mainos-Televisio (Finnish television),49. is one of the first dffb films to show the preoccupation \\1th Springers media coverage. 4! The black-and­ white 16-mm film was shot between December 1967 and February 1968, thus after the fatal shooting of Ohnesorg and dming the Splinger Tlibunal. TI1e film sought, as she put it, to communicate to people for whom the argumentation of the extra-parliamentary opposition (A1!f3erparlamentarische Opposition or APO) was foreign. The realization that what was in the papers is not only information but that it also edits, comments on, distorts and can serve pa1ticular interests really hit me hard back then.1 To illustrate the influence, one shot shows all liders of a West-Berlin train reading Springer press papers. In order to show what Sander deemed to be the nexus of corporate media, economic interests, and politics, she uses quotations from Splinger-owned newspapers to constitute the dialogue of two men, who are representatives of West German companies. TI1e film shows the two men riding in the back of a car, being chauffeured along the Autobahn to West-Berlin to negotiate the political preconditions for saving the West-Berlin economy.<1.1 As she explains: The feature film type of sequences shows the strongly stylized communication between readers of the [Springer-owned] Welt, in other words the manipulators, and the BILD readers, the manip­ ulated ... Representatives of West German companies, who had gathered together in a working group focused on saving the [West] Berlin economy, made its rescue contingent on political con­ ditions ... Company men ... announce these pre-conditions by speaking in actual quotes from the Welt papers.� The difference between Welt and BILD readers, which Sander mentions and would be kno\\11 to audiences of the time in West Germany, consisted of the fact that Welt was read predomi­ nately by the wealthy and the bourgeoisie (the manipulators as Sander puts it) and Bild was read mostly by the working class. A subsequent dffb production, Ernst-Ullich Knaudts 35-minute thesis or graduation film Unsere Steine (Our Stones, February 1968), shot in black-and-white and 16 mm, is even more provocative in its suggestions of what shape the direction actions against the Splinger press might take, sho\\1ng rocks being thro\\11 at the Springer-o\\11ed daily the Berliner Mor­ genpost.45. To explain the action, the shot cuts to stills of newspaper headlines from another Springer-o\\11ed West-Berlin daily, BZ, and its coverage of demonstrations and the later disproven police allegations against the demonstrators.4fl 111e film opens \\1th a black screen and Sanders voiceover narration, s ... Purchase answer to see full attachment