German Cinema in the Age of Neoliberalism

Baer Hester :

Hester Baer is Associate Professor of German and Cinema and Media Studies at the University of Maryland, College Park. She is the author of Dismantling the Dream Factory: Gender, German Cinema, and the Postwar Quest for a New Film Language. She currently serves as co-editor of the journal Feminist German Studies.

"It is [a] synthesis of cultural and textual analysis that gives German Cinema in the Age of Neoliberalism its heft, never reducing the films in its scope to purely personal creations of their makers nor as automated cultural products, but as ambiguous texts and commercial objects that are always revealing, whether deliberately or inadvertently, evidence of a perpetually shifting social and economic landscape. [...] Baer takes a complex intersection of politics and culture and renders a convincing and comprehensive history."
- Adam Cook, EuropeNow, special feature on European Culture and the Moving Image (2021)

"This book theorizes neoliberalism beyond a reductive sole emphasis on economics. Instead, it convincingly demonstrates the gendering of neoliberalism through the reading of key films illuminating German cinema with robust, sophisticated, and in-depth scholarship."
- Barbara Mennel, Rothman Chair and Professor of German Studies and Film Studies, University of Florida

"This book provides an original and bold way to rethink German film history since the 1980s. Baer’s comparative close readings, which pair films often not thought of in the same context, are provocative and eye-opening, challenging traditional wisdom and producing fresh insights where observers may have thought that all has been said. This is revisionist film history at its best."
- Gerd Gemünden, Sherman Fairchild Professor of the Humanities, Dartmouth College

"As such, this book represents an extraordinary achievement. It is written in a lucid, compelling prose that vivifies the stakes underpinning the films discussed and brings coherence to complex entanglements of economics, politics, and aesthetics, while also demonstrating that no analysis is complete without a consideration of gender. The volume not only helps us rethink German cinema; it also raises the bar for how we approach the work of thinking and writing about it."
- Angelica Fenner, The German Quarterly, Summer 2022