German through Film / Cinema for German Conversation

Abstract

Baker reviews German through Film by Adriana Borra and Ruth Mader-Koltay and Cinema for German Conversation by Jeanne Schueller.

VIII. German through Film (All Levels)

Borra, Adriana, and Ruth Mader-Koltay. German through Film. New Haven: Yale UP 2007. Paper, 153 pp., $29.00. «yalepress.yale.edu»

Schueiler, Jeanne. Cinema for German Conversation. Newburyport, MA: Focus Publishing/R. Puffins, 2009. Paper, 354 pp., $59.95. «www.pullins.com»

I discovered German through Film and Cinema for German Conversation while preparing my first semester-long course on German film. Both textbooks were not only immensely useful, but their authors' obvious excitement for their subject - teaching contemporary German films - proved to be contagious.This review outlines the books' approach to teaching films in general and gives an example of the application of both books in the college classroom in particular.

In this semester-long, fourth-year film course taught in German, the themes on which we focused were the depiction of childhood and children as well as the topic of Heimat in German films. The settings were pre-World War I Germany (Michael Haneke's Das weiße Band), the Third Reich (Volker Schlöndorff 's Die Blechtrommel), Kenya during the years 1938-1947 (Caroline Schlink's Nirgendwo in Afrika), post-war Germany (Sönke Wortmann's Das Wunder von Bern, Michael Verhoeven's Das schreckliche Mädchen), postwar Auschwitz (Robert Thalheim 's Am Ende kommen Touristen), and Berlin (Margarethe von Trotta's Das Versprechen, Wolfgang Becker's Goodbye, Lenin, and Hans Weingartner's Die fetten Jahre sind vorbei). The last two films, the children's film Bernd Sahling's Die Blindgänger and Caroline Link's Jenseits der Stille, thematize the meaning of music in the lives of blind children in contemporary Germany.

I mention my course because seven of the eleven films above are discussed in the texts under review. German through Film thematizes Jenseits der Stille, Comedian Harmonists (Joseph ViIsmaier), Lola rennt (Tom Tykwer), Aimée und Jaguar (Max Färberböck), Im Juli (Fatih Akin), Was tun wenn's brennt (Gregor Schnitzler), Nirgendwo in Afrika, and Good Bye, Lenin. Cinema for German Conversation didacticizes Merry Christmas (Christian Carion), Rosenstraße (Margarethe von Trotta), Das Wunder von Bern, Solino (Fatih Akin), Das Leben der Anderen (Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck), Berlin is in Germany (Hannes Stöhr), A//es auf Zucker (Dani Levy), Am Ende kommen Touristen, Im Juli (Fatih Akin), Kebab Connection (Anno Saul) , Die Blindgänger, and Die fetten Jahre sind vorbei.

I found the authors' approaches to teaching film so compelling that I patterned my steps and exercises for the films not discussed in their textbooks after theirs: First, I provided general information about the relevant film (awards, synopsis, characters, cultural and historical background). As a next step, Borra/Mader-Koltay suggest pre-viewing questions, such as (for Jenseits der Stille): Kennen Sie gehörlose Menschen? Mit welchen Problemen haben gehörlose Menschen im Alltag zu kämpfen? Wer waren in Ihrer Kindheit die wichtigsten Bezugspersonen neben Ihren Eltern? (8). Both German through Film and Cinema for German Conversation introduce vocabulary together with exercises that ensure that students will recognize and remember the words when they experience them again in context while viewing the respective films. In addition, Borra/Mader-Koltay encourage the use of a dictionary by asking students to look up the definitions for taub, gehörlos, taubstumm, and schwerhörig and advise them to attend to fine differences in meaning. Finally, students have to supply an English translation for each term. Jeanne Schueller also includes very thoughtful Internet exercises (available through the Focus website), milling activities (highlighting a lingustic aspect of German exemplified in the film) , and a section that asks students to predict the plot.

Both textbooks list a number of viewing and post-viewing activities. German through Film presents these activities in order of increasing difficulty. They range from closed true or false and multiple choice formats to a question-and-answer format in which students must attribute phrases from the movie to a character or put sentences and acts from the movie into the right order. As the authors point out, "These exercises are designed not only to help students grasp specific facte about the film but to give them a more global comprehension of the movie's content and characters" (xi). Jeanne Schueller includes similar activities with the addition of more traditional content questions as well as discussing still shots.

German through Film offers a broad and creative range of post-viewing activities. These exercises range from the description of characters and their relationships to the discussion of selected scenes, the soundtrack, and cinematography. They focus on particular cultural aspects or encourage students to create alternative dialogues or endings for the film. These activities can be assigned as written or oral exercises. Throughout this section, students are asked to discuss or present individually. In a separate section entitled Jetzt sind Sie dran, students recreate a scene or (re)write a dialogue, act it out, or film it. This section concludes with Internetbased activities, which examine particular elements from the movies. Students look for film reviews and compare them, visit websites for German movie theaters, and determine what films are shown, how much tickets cost, etc. They look for the English title of the film, read reviews, and compare them to the German reviews. They find out about the filmmakers and what other films they have made. In a summary section Zuletzt) students compare the movies presented in the book and find a short history of postwar German cinema "to help place the movies analyzed in a wider context and also learn something about preceding period of German film history" (xi).

Jeanne Schueller's selection of post-viewing activities includes exercises that foster analysis, interpretation, and reflection. Students discuss themes, interpret still shots, and choose from writing prompts. Finally, Schueller contributes readings and questions that supplement the cultural information provided by the movie by offering another perspective, e.g., interviews with the filmmakers or contemporary witnesses, newspaper articles, brochures (e.g., "Kleiner Ratgeber für den Umgang mit blinden Menschen" [299-300], etc.) These different text types help to deepen students' understanding of the cultural significance of the themes and topics that they have encountered in the films.

Both textbooks are innovative contributions to modern-language pedagogy. They will be appreciated by educators who offer content-based, communicative instruction focusing on current topics in German culture. The main difference between these two excellent textbooks is their scope. German through Film is a clever, compact, and complete guide that presents eight films on about 150 pages, while the heavier (350+ pages) and more extensive Cinema for German Conversation offers many ideas to teach twelve films in depth. Jeanne Schueiler introduces less well-known films that make learners curious about current developments in German film. All three authors have an acute sense of what "flies" in the classroom. My students volunteered to make movie posters to advertize German movie night in lower-level classes, introduced each film , and led a post-viewing discussion.

These two books belong on the bookshelf of anyone who teaches film or is thinking about offering a course on German film. My personal plea to the authors: Do your magic with older German classics, too!