German cinema

German cinema is the film industry and body of films produced in Germany. Its history spans silent-era expressionism, state-controlled filmmaking, postwar division, and reunification.

German Expressionism: An early twentieth-century German art movement marked by stylized forms, stark contrasts, and distorted settings. Its visual style defined landmark German films of the silent era.
The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari: A 1920 German silent horror film directed by Robert Wiene, known for its painted, distorted sets. Its expressionist design became an emblem of silent-era German film.
Fritz Lang: An Austrian-born filmmaker who directed influential German silent films before pursuing a career in Hollywood. His German work helped shape expressionist cinema and the science-fiction film.
UFA: Universum Film AG, a major German film company founded in 1917. Its studios and productions anchored the German film industry during the silent era.
West German cinema: Films produced in the Federal Republic of Germany before reunification in 1990. It developed separately from East German cinema and supplied the New German Cinema movement.
Weimar Republic: Germany’s democratic state from 1918 to 1933, marked by political upheaval and cultural innovation. Its freedoms and instability fostered the cinema associated with Weimar Germany.
Metropolis: A 1927 German science-fiction film directed by Fritz Lang, set in a starkly divided future city. Its scale and imagery exemplify the technical ambition of Weimar cinema.
Leni Riefenstahl: A German filmmaker whose documentaries and feature films became closely associated with Nazi propaganda. Her career exposes cinema’s entanglement with Nazi power and spectacle.
DEFA: Deutsche Film-Aktiengesellschaft, the state-owned film studio of East Germany. It produced feature films and documentaries within the GDR’s centralized system.
Hollywood: The US film industry centered in Los Angeles and a global center of commercial film production. Hollywood offered a different industrial model and drew German filmmakers into exile and migration.

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