Situated on Europe's northern periphery, Denmark, Finland,
Iceland, Norway, and Sweden found themselves caught between warring
powers during World War II. Ultimately, these nations survived the
...conflict as sovereign states whose wartime experiences have
profoundly shaped their historiography, literature, cinema and
memory cultures. Nordic War Stories explores the
commonalities and divergences among the five Nordic countries,
examining national historiographies alongside representations of
the war years in canonical literary works, travel writing, and film
media. Together, they comprise a valuable companion that challenges
the myth of Scandinavian homogeneity while demonstrating the
powerful influence that the war continues to exert on national
identities.
In Germany the end of World War II calls forth images of obliterated cities, hungry refugees, and ghostly monuments to Nazi crimes. Drawing on diaries, photographs, essays, reports, fiction and film, ...Werner Sollors makes visceral the sorrow and anger, guilt and pride, despondency and resilience of a defeated people--and the paradoxes of occupation.
Even a century after its conclusion, the devastation of the Great War still echoes in the work of artists who try to make sense of the political, moral, ideological, and economic changes and ...challenges it spawned. This volume provides the first book-length study of World War I as it is featured in French cinema, from the silent era to contemporary films. Presented in three thematic sections--Recording and Remembering the Great War, Women at the Front, and Interrogating Commemoration--the essays in this volume explore the ways in which French film contributes to the restoration and modification of memories of the war. Films such as La Grande Illusion,King of Hearts, A Very Long Engagement, and Joyeux Noel are among those discussed in the volume's examination of the various ways in which film mediates personal and collective memories of this critical historical event.
Based on the premise that a society's sense of commonality depends upon media practices, this study examines how Hollywood responded to the crisis of democracy during the Second World War by creating ...a new genre - the war film. Developing an affective theory of genre cinema, the study's focus on the sense of commonality offers a new characterization of the relationship between politics and poetics. It shows how the diverse ramifications of genre poetics can be explored as a network of experiental modalities that make history graspable as a continuous process of delineating the limits of community.
Der Dokumentarfilm German Concentration Camps Factual Survey stellt in seiner heute vorliegenden Form eine Besonderheit dar. Seine Bilder stammen aus den unterschiedlichen Konzentrations-, Arbeits- ...und Vernichtungslagern des nationalsozialistischen Deutschlands; er wurde in Zusammenarbeit der Fraktionen der Alliierten im Jahr 1945 gedreht und ermöglicht authentische Rück- und Einblicke, die ohne ihn schon längst nicht mehr möglich wären. Aufgrund von Meinungsverschiedenheiten innerhalb der Alliierten konnte das Projekt erst 2014 vervollständigt und veröffentlicht werden.
Richard Holzinger Reiter legt mit diesem Buch einerseits eine Einführung in die Thematik der Atrocity Pictures, andererseits die erste detaillierte Analyse des Films German Concentration Camps Factual Survey überhaupt vor. Dabei betrachtet er den Film in seiner Gesamtheit – um so auch eine kritische Sichtweise auf das Werk zu ermöglichen.
So, wie der Film als eine Form der Aufklärung über die grausamen Ereignisse innerhalb der Lager dienen sollte, um den Menschen zu zeigen, was sie übersehen haben, zeigt auch Holzinger Reiter auf, dass diese Atrocities als Teil der Vergangenheit gegenwärtig und noch immer so relevant sind, wie sie es bei Kriegsende waren. Die Bilder haben über die Jahre in ihrer Wirkung nicht an Ausdruck und Wichtigkeit verloren, sie bilden eine Brücke zur Vergangenheit, die das Grauen der damaligen Arbeits-, Konzentrations- und Vernichtungslager eindrücklich und bewegend vergegenwärtigt.
Wir dürfen unsere Augen nicht verschließen und müssen uns dem Grauen stellen – nur so können wir aus der Geschichte lernen und eine bessere Zukunft schaffen, die aus Fehlern lernt, anstatt sie zu wiederholen.
'Images of Occupation in Dutch Film' is the first book in English to examine changing representations of the German wartime occupation of the Netherlands within Dutch post-war feature films made in ...the period 1962 to 1986. This important new study explores in detail the complex, evolving role played by film within Dutch cultural memory and asks to what extent film can fully embrace, transmit or assimilate the complexities and collective legacies of war and occupation. As Dutch public opinion toward the war altered over the post-war decades - attitudes to the 1940-1945 occupation, Jewish persecution, the enemy, deprivations, resistance and collaboration - so too shifted the presence - or indeed absence - of these elements in subsequent films. The historical trajectory of Dutch recovery and reconstruction: politically, economically and, most complex of all, psychological, came to be revealed, often unconsciously, in the films of the period. Through detailed analyses of seven key film texts, from 1962's De Overval, to Paul Verhoeven's 1977 film Soldaat Van Oranje and Fons Rademakers' De Aanslag, this book offers insights into the previously under-explored connections between filmic images of occupation and parallel shifts in society's perceptions about the war at the times the films were made. It seeks to deepen awareness of these compelling, valuable Dutch cultural documents, and to ask how a nation's films re-tell its history."
Between 1929 and 1942, Hungary's motion picture industry experienced meteoric growth. It leapt into Europe's top echelon, trailing only Nazi Germany and Italy in feature output. Yet by 1944, ...Hungary's cinema was in shambles, internal and external forces having destroyed its unification experiments and productive capacity.
Based on the premise that a society’s sense of commonality depends upon media practices of political communitarization, this study examines how Hollywood was deployed during the Second World War. It ...shows that Hollywood responded to the crisis of democracy in the war by creating a new genre. Using an affective theory of genre cinema, it offers a new characterization of the relationship between politics and poetics in forming commonality.
At the beginning of the Second World War the Nazi hierarchy at an early stage, had fully recognized the importance of controlling the depiction of military conflict in order to ensure the continued ...morale of their combat troops by providing a bridge between the soldiers and their families. Promoting the use of photographic record also allowed the Nazis to exercise control over negative depictions of the war. In contrast, the British military and political decision makers were reluctance to embrace any potential propaganda benefits of film and photographic material in the build up to and the early months of the Second World War. Military commanders in the field were conscious that their tactical blunders could be recorded on film and still photographs and made available to the British public. Visions such as the First World War use of troops as fodder for machine guns and the ensuing mud- coated corpses of British troops were not the sort of record of the conflict that British generals in the field were willing to contemplate. British politicians and their generals feared that a realistic presentation of the horror of war could have an adverse effect on recruiting. However, pressure was to come from across the Atlantic where the refusal to allow reporting of the war was harming Britain's cause in the United States and British diplomats overseas reported that the Germans were winning the propaganda war throughout the unoccupied countries of Europe. This belated acceptance of the need for open reporting of the conflict meant that when it was finally accepted as useful the P.R.2 Section (Public Relations) at the War Office and the British Military found itself in a 'catch up' situation. Despite the disadvantages of such a slow start, the British combat cameramen grew in strength throughout the conflict, producing films such as Desert Victory, Tunisian Victory, Burma Victory, The True Glory and a huge stock of both cine and still material lodged as 'Crown Property' in the Imperial War Museum, London. The British Army Film and Photographic Unit's material represents some of the most frequently used records of historical events and key figures of the period. It is utilized by film producers and television program makers without the camera men who shot the footage being listed in program credits. This book does not seek to denigrate the work of others such as Accredited War Correspondents but it does seek to accord to the combat camera men of the A.F.P.U. the recognition they are entitled to, but have never received, for their enormous and unique contribution to the historical record of the Second World War. Based on memoirs, personal letters and interviews with the AFPU camera men, this book reveals the development of the unit and tells the human story of men who used cameras as weapons of war.
This book asks how was it possible for an actor to embody national identity and, by exploring the cultural contexts in which Mills and the nation became synonymous, the book offers a new perspective ...on 40 years of cinema and social change.
