Abstract
Released in 2003 in Germany to critical acclaim, Rosenstrafie (Rosenstrasse) indicated that Margarethe von Trotta, Germany's foremost female film director, who has offered the most sustained and successful female variant of Autorenkino in postwar German film history, is alive and well.1 It is worthwhile asking, however, what kind of politics-feminist and otherwise-is being offered to the viewer of von Trotta's Rosenstrasse. Does what I term her &" Mutterfilme" (mother films) continue the feminist politics of von Trotta's earlier doppelganger or "sister" films? How does von Trotta's first feature film directly and consistently thematizing the period of German National Socialism represent the intersection with or traversal of the political terrain of memory with that of feminism? Is fiction blurred with fact in this film through its claim to authenticity as it declares the historical veracity of the women's protest in Rose Street in February 1943; and if so, to what end? To address these questions, it is necessary to ask after the nature of the work performed by the figure of the mother in von Trotta's film. Which assumptions underlie the different levels of mobility represented by gentile women's bodies and those of Jewish women, for example? And what type of relationships are being staged between male Jewish and female non-Jewish German bodies at the level of the explicit narrative of National Socialist domination and genocide as well as through the feminist narrative for which the film becomes a vehicle? And, finally, does von Trotta's neofeminist return to German screen memories in Rosenstrasse significantly depart from her existing palette of films about women?.
Original language | English (US) |
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Title of host publication | The Collapse of the Conventional |
Subtitle of host publication | German Film and its Politics at the Turn of the Twenty-First Century |
Publisher | Wayne State University Press |
Pages | 109-135 |
Number of pages | 27 |
ISBN (Print) | 9780814333778 |
State | Published - 2010 |
ASJC Scopus subject areas
- General Arts and Humanities