1968 and the early cinema of the dffb

Abstract

This article focuses on West German cinema around 1968 of the then newly established Deutsche Film- und Fernsehakademie Berlin (dffb), especially of Harun Farocki, Ulrich Knaudt and Helke Sander. Early dffb films form a pivotal aesthetic and political node of 1960s West German film history hitherto under-examined. In both form and content, these films experimented with and contributed to the era’s political cinema. An examination of select early dffb films by Farocki, Knaudt and Sander provides a new angle on what constituted 1968 politically and aesthetically in West German cinema.