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12 - Yearning for Genre: The Films of Dominik Graf

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 December 2013

Jaimey Fisher
Affiliation:
Associate Professor of German and Cinema and Technocultural Studies, and Director of Cinema and Technocultural Studies, at the University of California, Davis.
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Summary

I think that it does not make much sense to demand, as [Dominik Graf] does, genre cinema in Germany because genre cinema requires existing genres; you cannot artificially make it or revive it as a retro-event… Graf's Sisyphus work is to keep making a film here and there that reminds us of how wonderful streets used to look in cinema, of how great nights used to look, and of how awesome women looked.

—Christian Petzold

I never harbored the hope, as Petzold describes it, to create once again the prototype that would somehow ignite once more an entire industry. But I suppose he is right that… I am in hell, where all those old films roast, and I try to inhale some vitality into them, but this is admittedly a difficult task, since the whole system is one that prevents a particular vitality in films.

—Dominik Graf

When taking stock of German film culture since the demise of its famous Autorenkino, which attracted international attention in the 1970s and reestablished West German cinema as “legitimate,” one could do worse than consider the singular case of Dominik Graf. For over the last thirty years Graf—who is almost completely unknown outside Germany and whose status at home does not nearly approach the level of recognition enjoyed by post-Autorenkino filmmakers such as Wolfgang Petersen, Roland Emmerich, and Doris Dörrie, nor that of the better-known post- Wende directors such as Sönke Wortmann, Tom Tykwer, and Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck—has been one of German film's most productive filmmakers.

Type
Chapter
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Generic Histories of German Cinema
Genre and its Deviations
, pp. 261 - 284
Publisher: Boydell & Brewer
Print publication year: 2013

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  • Yearning for Genre: The Films of Dominik Graf
  • Edited by Jaimey Fisher, Associate Professor of German and Cinema and Technocultural Studies, and Director of Cinema and Technocultural Studies, at the University of California, Davis.
  • Book: Generic Histories of German Cinema
  • Online publication: 05 December 2013
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  • Yearning for Genre: The Films of Dominik Graf
  • Edited by Jaimey Fisher, Associate Professor of German and Cinema and Technocultural Studies, and Director of Cinema and Technocultural Studies, at the University of California, Davis.
  • Book: Generic Histories of German Cinema
  • Online publication: 05 December 2013
Available formats
×

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To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

  • Yearning for Genre: The Films of Dominik Graf
  • Edited by Jaimey Fisher, Associate Professor of German and Cinema and Technocultural Studies, and Director of Cinema and Technocultural Studies, at the University of California, Davis.
  • Book: Generic Histories of German Cinema
  • Online publication: 05 December 2013
Available formats
×