Welcome to LTGR 270 “Transnational German Cinema”
This will be our course blog this semester, which we will be using to post our film analyses and display the media and videos that we will create this semester.
To start off the semester reply below describing either the first foreign film you remember seeing that made a strong impression on you or simply your favorite foreign film and why.
The first foreign film that made a strong impression on me was “Maria Llenas Eres de Gracia” or in English “Maria full of grace”. This film left an impact because of the message that it provokes during the film. The film starts out in Colombia and it goes on to show a young woman named Maria becoming a drug mule and her journey bringing drugs into the United States. The struggles of what the impoverished go through left a large impact on my view of Colombia.
My favorite foreign film that I vividly remember and made a strong impression on me is called La vita e Bella. It was made in 1997, I like the movie because it conveys a strong message while implementing comedy. Also the film is about and based in Italy. So because im Italian it really lead me to enjoy and relate to the culture and different aspects to the film. La vita e Bella in Italian means life is beautiful. The movie subliminally depicts and contrives messages that throughout the hardest challenges in life, life is beautiful. Expressions and thoughts like this really interest me and grab my attention ultimately making it pretty easy to decide this is my favorite foreign film and also one of the select few I vividly remember watching.
The first foreign film I remember studying, if not seeing, is Metropolis (1927) by Fritz Lang. This is an early scifi drama about the son of a wealthy citizen who falls in love with a working class woman who is highly venerated among her class. The film explores stark class differences and is regarded as one of the first scifi films, helping to define the genre. Loh, it is German made though it is a silent film. Interestingly, it came out the same year as The Jazz Singer by Alan Crosland, which was nearly the first film produced with sound using a vitaphone, marking the beginning of the “talkies” era. I watched this film in my first film class in high school when I was introduced to the glories of film studies. Metropolis’ detailed animation, exaggerated make up, huge moving sets and black and white contrasts made a lasting impression. If you are a scifi fan and have not yet seen the film, I recommend it as a way to beef up your expertise in the genre.
The first foreign film that I remember seeing at a very young age was The Phantom of the Opera directed by Lon Chaney in 1925. When I first saw this I was actually a little terrified from it because of how dark it is and how uncomfortable it made me feel because there was no talking. However, this is when I really fell in love for silent film such as Charlie Chaplin and even Hitchcock’s early silent films because how powerful film scores can be without dialogue. The exaggeration of movements and facial expressions makes it feel more real because well that is all you really have to figure out what the characters are feeling since we can’t hear them. Even though there may be intertitles, the expression in just the performance is way stronger then words.
My favorite foreign film is “Sonnenallee” or “Sun Alley” in English. This is my favorite foreign film because it depicts the lives of several young people living in East Berlin and how important pop culture, specifically Rock and Roll music, was to many youths in East Berlin and often used as less radical forms of rebellion against the East German communist policies they were living under.
My favorite foreign film I have ever seen is “Grave,” or “Raw,” written and directed by Julia Ducornau in 2016. This french coming-of-age/horror film follows Justine through her first year of vet school. She and her family have been vegetarians for her whole life, but once she goes to school and is forced to eat a raw rabbit kidney during freshman hazing, she is unable to suppress her intense craving for meat. Throughout the film, Justine does whatever she can to eat any meat she can get her hands on, providing the viewer with some of the most disgusting visuals in recent years, making it famous for causing some viewers to vomit and/or faint in the theater. I love this film because of the way that it takes typical coming of age tropes and reshapes them into a disturbing and disgusting horror film. Despite its macabre surface level subject matter, this film is able to accurately display Justine’s coming of age and relationship with her sister and friends to the point where her psyche, not her actions, can still be relatable to the viewer. Ducornau was able to create one of the most compelling horror films of recent years and redefine what the genres of horror and coming-of-age can do.
My personal favorite foreign film is probably “Am Ende Kommen Touristen”, or: Tourists Come in the End. This film stands out the most in my mind since I watched it fairly recently and did some analysis on it for course work in German, but it is still an interesting film. It follows a young man from Berlin who is doing required social service (a mandatory practice in Germany for many years for non-service members) who ends up living with a holocaust survivor in Poland. It is an interesting way to look at how time and perspective warps the way history is seen, and how different people choose to remember or forget trauma. The film leaves the viewer in a state of confusion, wondering if it is better to preserve the past and learn from it, or try and fix what was broken and move on from it. I love it because it shows a difficult subject, the holocaust, which is often portrayed in a very one-dimensional sense (listing horrible facts and focusing on the suffering that ensued), and instead shows all the different human responses to this tragedy even as they unfold in recent history. It is a beautiful and rather short film if, which I would highly recommend for anyone interested in WW2 history (even though it is set in the 80’s I think).
The first foreign film I’ve ever seen was “Spirited Away”. It made a strong impression on me, since I watched it at a very young age. I remember moreso how I felt about the movie rather than what actually happened. I remember feeling tense throughout parts of the movie, as the main character had to face the events of the movie without her parents, who were totally helpless. That feeling and weight of responsibility made the strongest impression on me.
The first foreign film I’ve ever watched was “The Spirit of The Beehive.” It was an interesting film to watch as I was typically used to watching Hollywood style movies. It was a great piece of work involving two sisters in a run-down village as they hunt for Frankenstein. It definitely opened my eyes to foreign films and makes me want to watch more.
My first foreign film I have ever seen is Life is Beautiful (1993). I first saw the film in my AP European Studies class my sophomore year in High School. Siting in class watching Guido, the center character of the story, become so optimistic in the middle of the Holocaust blew me away. His family gets moved to the concentration camps, but before merely 30 minutes before the film displays the living in 1930s-40s Italy. People were so innocent, just living their daily lives and working their local shops, then people with matching grey and red uniforms came and took over their lives over a matter of seconds. What stood out to me about it is that there were more hints about this hostile takeover, yet people just ignored it and continued their lives like pretending to not even be affected by it. The refusal to fall victim to the outside world kind of stuck me in awe. The character, Roberto, has fallen in love with beautiful woman, who is an upperclass citizen in some random roy within the city. The love story s structured to develop how these characters interact with each other, with such comfort and compassion for one another. Then the Nazi soldiers shipped them to the camps, but the family never lost that sense of comfort or happiness due to Roberto ongoing performances pretending not to be afraid or in terror.
My personal favorite foreign film I watched was, “Am Ende Kommen Touristen” or “Tourists come in the End”. I really appreciated the film because it described how the German society copes with their vivid history in different ways. Specifically, the history of the Holocaust is portrayed. The film’s theme was to explain some choose to dwell slightly on the history and others choose to focus on keeping the history alive. Throughout watching the film I learned to keep an open mind with others peoples thoughts and actions because of the history they may have witnessed.
My favorite foreign film is “The Lives of Others,” a German film about East German Staatsicherheit. I thouroughly enjoyed it because you get a sense of understanding for each of the characters in the story. It also makes a good use of its setting in history as an excellent context for the films plot. I would recommend it to anyone.
The international film that I have enjoyed the most is “The Lobster” directed by Yorgos Lanthimos. It features a future where single people are turned into animals if they cannot find a suitable mate. The film was comedic, yet dark and artfully directed. I thought it was very creative, thoughtful, and uniquely presented.
I can not say that I have seen a foreign film, and if i have it was not one that made an impression on me at all. I am coming into this class with an open mind and no previous knowledge of foreign films I guess.
To be perfectly honest the only foreign films that I can remember watching are the Ip Man films. So I would have to say that these are my favorite foreign films. Now I have watched movies such as Dances With Wolves or The Last of the Mohicans that even though are shot in the United States they are about a completely different culture than ours. So one might consider these foreign films.
Gamechanger by Christian van Duuren is a short film going over a veteran with PTSD who has returned home and meets some kids playing war. As he joins the children you follow him as he slowly starts to re-live his experiences and the director’s methods of doing so are quite interesting. Of all the short films I have seen, this one always stands out among them all and is an excellent short film. The setting and characters are very human and make for a sad story.
I really don’t have a favorite foreign film but the film
The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari was one of several films that I had to watch for my Cinema Class last semester. It was the only film silent/foreign film that I watched that made feel sleepy
This is my first foreign film class, I haven’t seen many foreign films in my lifetime either so far but I am looking forward to finding a new favorite!
My favorite foreign film that left the biggest impression is Saul fia by László Nemes. I watched this when i was studying in the Czech Republic and taking a holocaust representational film class. It interested me due to the film pov style and I thought it was one of the most respectable movies we watched on showing this horror.
Good morning, I am in the same boat as JaegerP! I can honestly say that I have never watched a foreign film. At first I thought about some of the old Jackie Chan movies, but then again; after trying to think of one, I realized that the parts that i did see were just clips and not entire movies. I look forward to expanding my horizons and opening up new ways of thinking by experiencing and analyzing films from other cultures.
I honestly don’t know if I have seen any foreign films. I am excited to watch and get to know foreign films throughout the remainder of this course! One foreign film I have started but not finished was the film The Lobster, which has some dark British humor. I hope to finish it sometime soon!
I believe the first foreign film I saw was Amelie. The ethereal score is what makes me love this movie so much along with how quirky Amelie’s character is. I believe this movie is perfect.It perfectly captures my image of the year 2001.
The first foreign film I remember seeing that made a large impression on me was the Italian film Mamma Roma. This film made an impression on me because I found the story slightly tragic but also very realistic and interesting to its time period. I found the story line to be inspiring, it could be seen as unethical the way Mamma Roma earned her money but it was all done within good reason.
The first foreign film that I watched was the Japanese film Battle Royale. I had previously seen brief parts of other foreign movies but until I watched Battle Royale my attention span was not game for subtitles. I watched this movie at the peak of the Hunger Games popularity because of all the flack Suzanne Collins caught for ripping off its idea. I went in trying to focus on the film’s similarity to the Hunger Games, but it did not take long for me to be so captivated by Battle Royale’s story that I couldn’t think of anything else. This film opened my eyes to the presence of so many good movies outside of the US and made me realize that reading subtitles can actually enhance the experience of watching a movie. There is something really cool about being able to read dialogue in your own voice, I think it can help viewers identify with what is on screen.
I do not think I have seen a foreign film all the way through, but one of my favorites that I started watching is Shall We Dance, which is based in Japan. I am looking forward to learning more about films in this class, and about the German culture.