The Cinema of the Berlin School

In the 1990s, after German reunification, a new style emerged in German cinema, which film critics called the Berlin School (Berliner Schule).
The earliest films by Christian Petzold, Angela Schanelec and Thomas Arslan catch viewers’ attention with their reduced visual imagery and unembellished claims to reality. In this sense they distance themselves from commercial cinema. Their films had an enormous influence on the works of young filmmakers in the early 2000s, so that today we speak of the first and second generation of the Berlin School. Many of the filmmakers studied at the German Film and Television Academy Berlin, the DFFB.
 
The films of the Berlin School are characterised by an aesthetic of sparseness – long camera angles, very few cuts and succinct dialogues. They address the conflicts of interpersonal relationships that remain unsolved. The protagonists always seem to fail as a result of their existential fears and feelings of alienation. Or, in the words of the cultural and film critic Georg Seeßlen: “The films of the ‘Berlin School’ try to depict capitalism. As a living space and a lifetime of human beings, who do not merge into it and do not live up to it.” (Seeßlen 2007)
 
Starting on April 25, 2018, the Media Lounge of Goethe-Institut Libanon will present a selection of films from the Berlin School.
 
All films will be shown in their original versions with English subtitles.
Free entrance.