L.A., Berlin, and Beyond: Decentering German Film History

Abstract

“L.A., Berlin, and Beyond: Decentering German Film History,” investigates different cinematic communities, questioning where German cinema occurs and what cinematic objects comprise German film history. This research focuses on the transatlantic migrations of a collection of German language Heimat films (the “LA-Sammlung”) in order to recast how national cinema is defined. In examining sites of German cinema outside its generic and geo-political borders, I call for a broad inclusion of Germanness in defining German cinema and cinema history. This work looks at German/-American Los Angeles in the mid 20th century and utilizes the theoretical framework of prosthetic memory to posit that the postwar Angeleno media (including the German theater, La Tosca) cultivated a West German identity, despite a heterogeneous German-speaking audience. It further examines the German film archive’s own institutional politics to illustrate both the restrictions and possibilities of a nationally based cinema. The final section looks at the postwar, West German Heimat genre’s influence on and presence in other national screen cultures, e.g., in Bollywood, to suggest that this so-called domestic genre has global reach.