Hans-Jürgen Syberberg, the Film Director as Critical Thinker
Essays and Interviews

"Hans-Jürgen Syberberg is an original, the most controversial of all the New German directors and a figure who has long been at the vanguard of the resurgence of experimental filmmaking in his homeland. Syberberg’s most characteristic films examine recent German history: a documentary, for example, about Richard Wagner’s daughter-in-law, who was a close friend of Hitler (The Confessions of Winifred Wagner [1975]). But especially “historical” is his trilogy covering one hundred years of Germany’s past, including, most famously, Hitler-A Film from Germany, also known as Our Hitler (1977). In this film and other works, Syberberg unites fictional narrative and documentary footage in a style that is at once cinematic and theatrical, mystical and magical. Hans-Jürgen Syberberg, the Film Director as Critical Thinker: Essays and Interviews is the first edited book in English devoted to this director’s work, and includes his most important English-language interviews as well as some of the best English-language essays on his work. In sum, this book is a significant contribution not only to the study of Syberberg’s oeuvre, but also to the study of German history and politics in the second half of the twentieth century

Foreword -- Preface -- Acknowledgements -- List of Figures -- Introduction: Hans-Jürgen Syberberg: Of Fantastic and Magical Worlds -- A Career Review -- Politics, Aesthetics, and Patriarchy in The Confessions of Winifred Wagner -- Hans-Jürgen Syberberg: Our Hitler as Visual Politics; Eye of the Storm: Syberberg’s Hitler -- Interview with Hans-Jürgen Syberberg -- Hans-Jürgen Syberberg’s Hitler: An Interview -- ‘In the Destructive Element Immerse’: Hans-Jürgen Syberberg and Cultural Revolution -- Hans-Jürgen Syberberg: An Interview -- Syberberg’s Our Hitler, Wagnerianism, and Alienation: A Re-viewing -- Myths for Sale-Reviews of Ludwig: Requiem for a Virgin King and Karl May -- Sustaining Romanticism in a Postmodernist Cinema: An Interview with Hans-Jürgen Syberberg -- ‘They Want to Kill Me’: An Interview with the Filmmaker and Theater Director Hans-Jürgen Syberberg -- There’s No Place like Heimat: Nazism and the Work of Film Director Hans-Jürgen Syberberg -- Germany’s Heart: The Modern Taboo -- Interview with German Filmmaker Hans-Jürgen Syberberg -- Hans-Jürgen Syberberg and the State of the Ghost -- ‘Adolphe Appia and Me’: A Discussion with Hans-Jürgen Syberberg -- The Theater-of-Film of Hans-Jürgen Syberberg: Parsifal and Die Nacht -- Postscript: Hans-Jürgen Syberberg: Leni Riefenstahl’s Heir? -- Filmography (with Credits for All Features, Documentaries, and Shorts) -- Bibliography.-Index