Film List Neuer Deutscher Film incl. FREE STREAMS 

"The old film is dead. We believe in the new," was read out on blue cardboard during the film festival in Oberhausen in 1962. Papa's Cinema is Dead is considered the zero hour of German film. A drumbeat, although the rebels of the Oberhausen Manifesto had almost nothing to show up to that point. There were only three of them who had already made longer films. Hansjürgen Pohland had directed Toby in 1961, Ferdinand Khittl was working on Die Parallelstrasse and Herbert Vesely on Das Brot der frühen Jahre. Still, 26 filmmakers tried to do what had happened in Italy after the war and in France a few years earlier. Just like the French, the young Germans wanted to get away from the quality cinema of a Helmut Käutner. It was not about big careful films, but about small personal fantasies, about breaks, mistakes, deviations and ambiguities. When the first feature films were released, however, some of them made poor and ponderous films right from the start, which soon ended up on TV. Others had potential: Volker Schlöndorff was strongly influenced by themes, as were later Reinhard Hauff, Peter Lilienthal, Michael Verhoeven and Margarethe von Trotta. Then there were those who reflected on images and forms, such as Alexander Kluge and Edgar Reitz - always careful to keep their distance in order to emphasize the symbolic nature of their images. They were followed by Ulrike Oettinger, Helke Sander, Werner Schroeter and Hans Jürgen Syberberg. Then there were those with a great euphoria for pure forms of cinema, oriented to models and genres: Roland Klick, Klaus Lemke, Rudolf Thome and Will Tremper. These beginnings were deepened in the 70s by the stars of the New German Cinema: Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Werner Herzog and Wim Wenders. Today, themes and motifs that have been varied can be discerned beyond the individual films. As in Neo Realism and the Nouvelle Vague, there were first precursors (The Bread of Early Years, Two Among Millions), the first films after the Manifesto (Young Törless, Tattoo, Farewell to Yesterday), the high points (Beer Fight, Hitler, The Marriage of Maria Braun, David, Palermo or Wolfsburg, Frank Orlando, Fitzcarraldo, The State of Things) and finally fatigue. All of them were united by the attempt to operate with completely different images, to open up a new view of unusual figures in an ordinary world. The new cameramen for the discoveries of a Werner Herzog or the artificiality of a Werner Schroeter also played a large part in this. Jost Vacano for Klick or Schlöndorff, Jörg Schmidt-Reitwein for Herzog and Gerard Vandeberg for Lilienthal and Schamoni, most recently the stars Michael Ballhaus for Fassbinder and Robby Müller for Wenders. Ballhaus gave Fassbinder's cinema a new opulence and Müller revolutionized the genre of road movies with Wenders. One merit of all filmmakers after Oberhausen was the will to deal with the past. National Socialism was finally dealt with, for example in Straub/Huillet's Nicht versöhnt (1964). Die Ehre der Maria Braun (The Honor of Maria Braun), Deutschland im Herbst (Germany in Autumn), and Deutschland bleiche Mutter (Germany's Pale Mother) are all also confrontations with the Nazi era. The second major theme was the struggle for identity without recourse to father and mother. In Shamoni's Closed Season for Foxes, a journalist swings between the upper- and lower-middle-class worlds and ultimately chooses not to. In Wenders' Alice in the Cities, In the Course of Time, and Paris Texas, being on the road becomes a space for self-discovery. Another theme was women in West German society. Helke Sander-Brahms (Shirin's Wedding) and Margarethe von Trotta (The Second Awakening of Christa Klages) characterize their figures artfully and excitingly, Rudolf Thome in Red Sun takes a radical approach to the subject: A women's shared apartment that kills every man after three days. Since the Nouvelle Vague, genres were no longer fixed in order to always retell the same thing, but were playgrounds and reservoirs for new things. The New German Cinema quickly adopted this attitude in Heimatfilm: Peter Fleischmann's Jagdszenen aus Niederbayern, Reinhard Hauff's Mathias Kneisel, Volker Vogeler's Jaider, Der einsame Jäger or Uwe Brandner's Ich liebe dich, ich töte dich turn the genre on its head. They do not transfigure the homely, but enlighten it. The theme of coming of age set special accents. Unlike New Hollywood, these were mostly films of failure. Schaaf's Tattoo, Click's Supermarket and Hark Bohm's Nordsee ist Mordsee show that happiness only exists elsewhere. The political cinema of Peter Lilienthal represented an important footnote: Malatesta and Es herrscht Ruhe im Land do not sharpen the scandalous through their story, but make it transparent. Fassbinder, Schroeter and van Ackeren also presented individual melodramas, there were very isolated romances (Thome's Berlin Chamissoplatz), even thrillers (Lemke's Negresco, Vadim Glowna's Desperado city) and comedies (May Spil's Zur Sache Schätzchen, Bernhard Sinkel's Lina Braake, Edgar Reitz's Die Reise nach Wien). More important, however, were road movies, the genre of departure: Kluge's Farewell to Yesterday, Lemke's 48 Hours to Acapulco, Roald Koller's Johnny West with Rio Reiser, and the films of Wim Wenders in which landscapes are mythically exaggerated. Unlike the Nouvelle Vague, the New German Cinema did not feel the great desire to expand cinema through genres, but the Germans did enjoy discovering new facets. The New German Cinema loved outsiders and eccentrics; rebels, bohemians and oddballs like Herzog's Kinski. In Thome's Rote Sonne there is a confused duel at Lake Starnberg. In Fassbinder's Merchants of the Four Seasons, people drink themselves to death, and in Wender's Paris Texas, they wander aimlessly through the desert. Lemke and Klick's Rebels rushed through the world, taking one hit after another (Rocker and Supermarket). The high point of New German Cinema came in the early '80s. Fassbinder's BRD trilogy, Schlöndorff's Die Blechtrommel, Herzog's Fitzcarraldo and Wender's Paris Texas were celebrated. With Fassbinder's death, Kohl's intellectual moral turn, the movement eroded. In the 80s/90s came the late revenge of "normal" film: it looked again like the West German cinema of the 50s.