German Cinema and the Neoliberal Turn : The End of the National-Cultural Film Project

Abstract

This chapter examines two films about the transitional status of cinema around 1980, Wenders’s The State of Things (1982), and Gusner’s All My Girls (1980). Situating these films in relation to Deleuze’s influential Cinema books, written in response to the crisis of cinema that both films narrate, I analyse these films as exemplifications of Deleuze’s crystal-image, a figure that helps explicate the way they make visible the cinematic confrontation between time and money. Both films discursively anticipate events of the neoliberal turn, demonstrating the impending triumph of market principles over the national-cultural film project represented by the New German Cinema and DEFA. This chapter offers a feminist-queer reading of how both films disrupt normative timelines to open up alternative imaginaries.