Screening the Past through the Lens of Humour: Representations of the Communist Past in Contemporary German Cinema
This article provides an insight into coming to terms with the communist past in contemporary German cinema by analysing three feature films released in different periods of the post-Wall era. It argues about various uses of humorous representations of the past in the social comedies Stilles Land [Silent Country, Andreas Dresen, 1992], Good Bye, Lenin! [Wolfgang Becker, 2003], and Boxhagener Platz [Boxhagen Place, Matti Geschonneck, 2010], and the implications they have in constructing collective memory. These representations are characteristic phenomena in Germany’s dealing with the communist past, which tend to re-interpret topoi such as victims and perpetrators and challenge stereotyped concepts of the memory discourse such as Ostalgie, Gegen-Ostalgie or Westalgie.
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