Mothers, Comrades, and Outcasts in East German Women's Film

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by Jennifer L. Creech

Type: Studies
Subject: Countries > Germany
Keywords: Germany, women, sociology
Publishing date: 2016
Publisher: Indiana University Press
Collection: New Directions in National Cinemas
Language: English

Relative size

Physical desc.

Hardcover • 306 pages
6 x 9 inches (15 x 23 cm)

ISBN

978-0-253-02269-1

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Book Presentation:
Mothers, Comrades, and Outcasts in East German Women's Film merges feminist film theory and cultural history in an investigation of "women's films" that span the last two decades of the former East Germany. Jennifer L. Creech explores the ways in which these films functioned as an alternative public sphere where official ideologies of socialist progress and utopian collectivism could be resisted. Emerging after the infamous cultural freeze of 1965, these women's films reveal a shift from overt political critique to a covert politics located in the intimate, problem-rich experiences of everyday life under socialism. Through an analysis of films that focus on what were perceived as "women's concerns"—marital problems, motherhood, emancipation, and residual patriarchy—Creech argues that the female protagonist served as a crystallization of socialist contradictions. By framing their politics in terms of women's concerns, these films used women's desire and agency to contest the more general problems of social alienation and collectivism, and to re-imagine the possibilities of self-fulfillment under socialism.

About the Author:
Jennifer L. Creech is Associate Professor of German at the University of Rochester, where she is Affiliate Faculty in Film and Media Studies, and Associate Faculty at the Susan B. Anthony Institute for Gender and Women's Studies. She is editor (with Thomas O. Haakenson) of Spectacle. Her research and teaching interests include late 20th-century German literature, film, and culture; cinema studies; and Marxist and feminist theories.

Press Reviews:
"Not only is this monograph sure to become an essential resource for Germanists and historians of socialist media and East German culture, but it will also make rewarding reading for feminist scholars keen to explore the implications of the public/private dichotomy and possibilities for women's emancipation under socialism. With this well-researched and skillfully argued study, Creech undertakes the critical intervention of rescuing East German women's films from the dustbin of history.
"
-Monatshefte

"
Mothers, Comrades, and Outcasts in East German Women's Film provides new readings on East German women's films and raises important questions about the cross-border continuities of feminist discourse played out on East German cinema screens.
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-Modern Language Review

"
Overall, Creech practices a form of critical film analysis that also attends to aesthetic and formal aspects. She combines thorough and insightful analysis with a rich catalogue of intertextual references to other films. The book is relevant for scholars and students of women's studies, film studies, and GDR studies.
"
-German Studies Review

"Creech has delivered a well-written and fascinating study of feminist films under state socialism. Her descriptions and analysis of the films are rich and convincingly argued in elegant prose."
-H-German

"
With this well-researched and skillfully argued study, Creech undertakes the critical intervention of rescuing East German women's films from the dustbin of history. "
-Monatshefte

"
This volume is recommended to film enthusiasts and scholars as well as anyone interested in the history of DEFA and the complex relationship between cultural politics, feminism, and cinema. In her innovative and internationally oriented approach to DEFA, Creech demonstrates the enduring relevance of these films and their critical engagement with the feminine as mother, comrade, and outcast.
" -Feminist German Studies