Movement and Performance in Berlin School Cinema

<p>Through a study of the contemporary German film movement the Berlin School Olivia Landry examines how narrative film has responded to our highly digitalized and mediatized age not with a focus on stasis and realism but by turning back to movement spectacle and performance. She argues that a preoccupation with presence liveness and affect--all of which are viewed as critical components of live performance--can be found in many of the films of the Berlin School. Challenging the perception that the Berlin School is a sheer adherent of slow cinema Landry closely analyzes the use of movement dynamism presence and speed in a broad selection of films to show how filmmakers such as Christian Petzold Angela Schanelec Thomas Arslan and Christoph Hochhäusler invoke the pulse of the kinesthetic and the tangibly affective. Her analysis draws on an array of film theories from early materialism to body theories phenomenology and contemporary affect theories. Arguing that these theories readily and energetically forge a path from film to performance Landry traces a trajectory between the two through which live experience presence spectacle intersubjectivity and the body in motion emerge and powerfully intersect. Ultimately <i>Movement and Performance in Berlin School Cinema</i> expands the methodological and disciplinary boundaries of film studies by offering new ways of articulating and understanding movement in cinema. </p>