You are invited to join the Franklin Humanities Institute and Screen/Society for the first film in the Antigone Film Series!
Germany in Autumn (Deutschland im Herbst)
Alexander Kluge and Beate Mainka-Jellinghaus, 1978
PLEASE REGISTER HERE
Stream link: https://www.twitch.tv/screensociety
Germany in Autumn is a montage film including segments from 11 directors, all of which reflect on the tragic events of autumn 1977, when ex-SS public official Hanns Martin Schleyer was kidnapped and murdered by the Red Army Faction (aka Baader-Meinhof group), 3 of whose members mysteriously died in prison. Opening with the official burial of Schleyer and ending with the police-interrupted burial of the Red Army Faction members, the film as a whole is structured by the differential burials to which the “friend” and “enemy” of the state are subjected. Germany in Autumn thus echoes the differential burial to which Creon subjects Eteocles and Polyneices in Sophocles’ ancient tragedy, Antigone. Yet Antigone makes more than one appearance in Germany in Autumn. On the one hand, Fassbinder replays the agon between Creon and Antigone in his own confrontation of his mother’s support for the dictatorship. On the other hand, Volker Schlöndorff’s segment forces the ancient tragedy to become comic, in order to circumvent the authoritarian censure of trying to critically visit Germany’s fascist past and its liberal afterlife.
Introduced by Stefani Englestein
Professor and Chair of German Studies
Duke University
Followed by Zoom discussion
Relevant publications:
Sibling Action: The Genealogical Structure of Modernity. New York: Columbia University Press. 2017.
“Sibling Logic; or, Antigone Again.” PMLA Vol. 12, No. 6 (2011): 38-54.
This series is cosponsored by Art, Art History, and Visual Studies; Classical Studies; English; International Comparative Studies; Literature; and Duke Arts. Additional cosponsors include the Institute of the Humanities and Global Cultures at the University of Virginia and the Academy of Global Humanities and Critical Theory, a research entity jointly promoted by the University of Virginia, Duke University and the University of Bologna. The screening of Germany in Autumn is cosponsored by German Studies.
Other films in this online/streaming series:
- Thu Oct 8, 7pm: The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada (Tommy Lee Jones, 2005)
- Thu Oct 29, 7pm: The Milk of Sorrow (La Teta Asustada) (Claudia Llosa, 2009)
- Thu Nov 12, 7pm: Phantoms of Lovanium (Les fantômes de Lovanium)
