Screening Art
Modernist Aesthetics and the Socialist Imaginary in East German Cinema
by Seán Allan
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Book Presentation:
With internationalist aspirations and wide-ranging historical perspectives, East German films about artists and their work became hotly contested spaces in which filmmakers could look beyond the GDR and debate the impact of contemporary cultural policy on the reception of their pre-war cultural heritage. Spanning newsreels, documentaries, and feature films, Screening Art is the first full-length investigation into a genre that has been largely overlooked in studies of DEFA, the state-owned Eastern German film studio. As it shows, “artist-films” played an essential role in the development of new paradigms of socialist art in postwar Europe.
About the Author:
Seán Allan is Professor of German at the University of St Andrews. His publications include the co-edited volumes Re-Imagining DEFA: East German Cinema in its National and Transnational Contexts (with Sebastian Heiduschke, 2016) and DEFA: East German Cinema, 1946–1992 (with John Sandford, 1999). He has published widely on the films of Konrad Wolf, Kurt Maetzig and Jürgen Böttcher, and on East German identity in post-unification cinema.
Press Reviews:
"…this book is about more than postwar socialist cinema. Allan places this moment of political filmmaking in the larger context of 21st-century cinematic history, and he does it effectively…and clearly." • Choice
"Allan’s conceptualization, crucially, supports the established ideas of periodization while also challenging and differentiating the monopoly of these ideas through his selection of case studies and split chapters…The selection of films is a refreshing mix of the canonical and films that so far have received little or no academic attention, organized in well interwoven and thematically cross-referenced chapters." • Modern Language Review
"This book is recommended to whoever would like to add a new facet to their image of the DEFA: Seán Allan’s monograph is the first that pays tribute to films devoted to art and aesthetics in the GDR." • Filmblatt
"Screening Art is deeply grounded in larger cultural questions that have had little discussion in English-language scholarship. Allan’s efforts, both the archival work and the visual analysis, are impressive, and his comprehensive treatment of the most significant cultural-political debates and policies of the GDR is balanced and engaging." • Heather E. Mathews, Pacific Lutheran University
"This is an accessible and fascinating account of the ways in which East German filmmakers made use of art and artists over more than forty years of film production. Allan proves a knowledgeable and reliable guide to the genre, showing how developments in the Künstlerfilm were subject to paradigm shifts in art and aesthetics in the GDR." • Nick Hodgin, University of Cardiff
> From the same author:
Re-Imagining DEFA (2016)
East German Cinema in its National and Transnational Contexts
Dir. Seán Allan and Sebastian Heiduschke
> On a related topic:
Neubau Atmospheres (2025)
East German Cultural Remediations of Modernist Architecture
Hollywood Behind the Wall (2005)
The Cinema of East Germany
The Triumph of the Ordinary (2002)
Depictions of Daily Life in the East German Cinema, 1949-1989
Cinema of Collaboration (2022)
DEFA Coproductions and International Exchange in Cold War Europe
Cinema in Service of the State (2017)
Perspectives on Film Culture in the GDR and Czechoslovakia, 1945-1960
Dir. Lars Karl and Pavel Skopal
New German Cinema and Its Global Contexts (2025)
A Transnational Art Cinema
Dir. Marco Abel and Jaimey Fisher
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