Film and Politics
1. Discuss the use of cinematic avant-garde techniques as political devices in at least one film studied in class.
2. In what sense might Lanzmann’s Sobibor and/or Un vivant qui passe be described as filmic explorations of “deadness”?
3. Discuss the interplay of ethics and aesthetics in the context of Lanzmann’s interviewing techniques in Sobibor and/or Un vivant qui passe.
4. Explore the relationship between the present and the past as captured by Lanzmann’s camera in Sobibor and/or Un vivant qui passe.
5. “When it comes to the aim of revealing the truth, there can be no limitations put on the artist.” Discuss this statement in relation to Sobibor and/or Un vivant qui passe.
6. What kind of society does Fritz Lang’s Metropolis envisage and how does it portray this society, its class struggle and its violent conflicts in its imagery?
7. Riefenstahl always claimed that Triumph of the Will was a documentary rather than a propaganda film and that the ideological message was in its content rather than in its aesthetics. Discuss.
8. For Brecht Kuhle Wampe was an experiment in epic film, but for most of the time it was considered a propaganda film. Discuss.
9. Kracauer describes the mass ornament as an emblem of dehumanisation in capitalist society. Is its use in Metropolis part of a proto-fascist aesthetics or can it be interpreted as a critic of modern society?
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