عنوان

Politics and the moving image :

Number

TLets636846

Title Proper

Politics and the moving image :

General Material Designation

[Thesis]

First Statement of Responsibility

Mukhida, Leila

Title Proper by Another Author

contemporary German and Austrian cinema through the lens of Benjamin, Kracauer and Kluge

Name of Publisher, Distributor, etc.

University of Birmingham

Date of Publication, Distribution, etc.

2015

Dissertation or thesis details and type of degree

Ph.D.

Body granting the degree

University of Birmingham

Text preceding or following the note

2015

Text of Note

This thesis charts the trajectory of a strand of film-theoretical optimism in texts by Walter Benjamin (1882-1940), Siegfried Kracauer (1889-1966) and Alexander Kluge (1932-) from different moments in the twentieth century; the empirical corpus looks to post-reunification German and Austrian cinema to find evidence of this theoretical optimism in contemporary filmmaking practices. The thinkers advocate the leftist-political potential of film to stimulate a critical mode of spectatorship, and are to varying degrees influenced by Brecht and the neo- Marxist politics of the \({Frankfurter Institut für Sozialforschung}\). The objective of this thesis is thus twofold. First, it illustrates the continuing relevance of the following principal strands in the film-theoretical texts of Benjamin, Kracauer and Kluge: the representation of the figure of the worker in the \(Arbeiterfilm\) genre; the possibilities and limits of capturing reality using different modes of realism; the imperative of challenging viewers in order to transform them from 'consumers' into collaborators; and, following on from this, notions of shock and distraction, focusing on Benjamin's concept of the 'Schockwirkung'. Second, it shows how this diachronic, neo-Marxist approach can continue to illuminate facets of the political in contemporary cinema by German-speaking directors in an age of advanced capitalism and digital reproducibility.

JA Political science (General)

PN1993 Motion Pictures

Mukhida, Leila

University of Birmingham

Electronic name

p

[Thesis]

276903

a

Y