Multimedia Collection
Germany in Autumn
VHS
126 minutes
PN1997 .D4551 1996
One of the landmark works of the New German Cinema, Germany in Autumn was an unprecedented collective response by Germany's leading directors and writers to the climate of political terrorism in their country during the late 1970's.
Throughout the decade, the Red Army Faction (RAF) - an outgrowth of the notorious Baader-Meinhof Group - had waged a campaign of terror against those in power, and the government's escalating efforts to root out the terrorists had resulted in a virtual state of siege by the Autumn of 1977.
Here is an immediate, impassioned response to the events of that Autumn: the RAF kidnapping and murder of industrialist Hans-Martin Schleyer, and the subsequent, highly suspicious deaths of three imprisoned Baader-Meinhof terrorists. The film opens with footage of the Schleyer funeral and closes with the terrorists' funeral.
Through a striking, and often ironic, synthesis of staged fiction, archival footage and documentary material, the film succeeds in assimilating the many forces at work at the young Federal Republic faced its most troubled and challenging times: rampant terrorism, political repression, intergenerational conflict, the shadow of the Nazi past, and pressures from both East and West.
With its rich texture and profound sense of history - and viewed through the lens of current German political affairs - Germany in Autumn emerges as an extraordinary, inclusive, and disturbingly contemporary statement on the nature of political social, and personal responsibility.
German with enhanced English subtitles.
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