Screening the Red Army Faction: Historical and Cultural Memory

by Christina Gerhardt

Overview

Screening the Red Army Faction: Historical and Cultural Memory explores representations of the Red Army Faction (RAF) in print media, film and art, locating an analysis of these texts in the historical and political context of unfolding events. In this way, the book contributes both a new history and a new cultural history of post-fascist era West Germany that grapples with the fledgling republic's most pivotal debates about the nature of democracy and authority; about violence, its motivations and regulation; and about its cultural afterlife. Looking back at the history of representations of the RAF in various media, this book considers how our understanding of the Cold War era, of the long sixties and of the RAF is created and re-created through cultural texts.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781501336676
Publisher:	Bloomsbury Academic
Publication date:	07/12/2018
Pages:	320
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.75(d)

About the Author

Christina Gerhardt is Associate Professor of German at University of Hawai'i at Manoa, USA.

Table of Contents

1. Looking Back: The Political and Historical Context, 1945-1970
2. Print Media and Social Movements in West Germany, 1967-1972
3. The RAF, Surveillance and the German Autumn in Cinema, 1966-1978
4. Diverging Trajectories: The RAF and Political Alternatives in New German Cinema, 1972-1982
5. Terrorism and the Cold War: The RAF and East Germany's The Ministry of State Security, 1982-1990
6. Terrorism and Memory: Gerhard Richter's October 18, 1977 and the Kunst-Werke Exhibit Myth of the RAF
Bibliography
Filmography
Index

Editorial Reviews

"Gerhardt’s Screening the Red Army Faction ... gives readers the opportunity to acquaint themselves with the radical period of the 1960s and 70s through the medium of film. " - New Praire Press

"This eminently readable and beautifully researched book is essential reading for anyone interested in the German postwar period ... an indispensable resource and guide to the complex currents that have shaped postwar Germany." - Jump Cut

“Gerhardt's book represents an extremely detailed examination of the technique, language, character arcs, and atmosphere in the films discussed … These discussions are in turban couched in thick historical context, ... Gerhardt's negotiation of a path through and between film and political history offers a valuable perspective from which to reassess the terrorism of West Germany's 'long seventies' and its echoes.” —The Sixties

“Gerhardt's well-researched and well-written book is a good antidote to more myopic accounts of the RAF and fulfills its promise of presenting a solid basis for a more responsible (and hopefully also, in the best sense, irresponsible) examination of its legacy.” —Cineaste

“This informative and well-documented study of the changing representations of the Red Army Faction is a welcome model for how to go about de-provincializing our understanding of the post-war German experience more generally.” —Kristin Ross, Professor Emerita of Comparative Literature, New York University, USA

“Based on rigorous primary research and the broadest analysis of art and film depicting the Red Army Faction to date, Christina Gerhardt's book fills a major gap in the study of cultural memory in postwar Germany. Most impressively, the book avoids both reductive caricatures and romantic celebrations of the RAF, instead grounding their actions and legacy in a broad international and historical context.” —Michael Shane Boyle, Lecturer in Drama, Theatre and Performance, Queen Mary University of London, UK

From the Publisher