EAST GERMANY
The birth of remembering
Wolfgang Staudte's
Die Mörder sind unter uns
(The Murderers are among Us, 1946)
After the Second World War, a new kind of German cinema was needed that placed the country's people in relation to recent history. Angela Palmer looks at how the Soviet-controlled sector and Staudte led the way with anti-fascist cinema that called for confronting the past and accountability.
GERMAN HORROR
Narratives of transgression, from Jewish folktales to German cinema
Paul Wegener's Der Golem, wie er in die Welt kam (The Golem: How He Came into the World, 1920)
In this analysis of Wegener's
Expressionist classic, Cathy Gelbin argues that it "bears out the tension between the ethical particularities of the Jewish Golem tradition and its universalising employment, which now highlights the Jew as a problematic figure."
DANISH HORROR
A witches' brew of fact, fiction and spectacle
Benjamin Christensen's
Häxan (The Witch, 1922)
Häxan is a "compelling oddity that still retains its often shocking effectiveness and... is one of the most artful and influential of all silent films." James Kendrick takes a look at the history, style and reception of this brilliant and bizarre "horror documentary."
GERMAN / HUNGARIAN HORROR
Unusually Gothic
Robert Sigl's Laurin (1987)
Marcus Stiglegger revives a lost Gothic treasure in this brief discussion of Robert Sigl's Laurin—a rare case of German genre film-making and the heir to FW Murnau's legacy.
