Film Dossiers
FEATURED CLASSICS
The following dossiers focus on several canonical Weimar films that have become part of world cinema: The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, Nosferatu, Metropolis, The Blue Angel, and M. As prototypes of global genre cinema, these iconic films continue to provide visual and narrative tropes for horror, vampire, science fiction, melodrama, and film noir.
The dossiers offer archival materials in translation and suggest links to online sources. The goal of this project is to promote a deeper historical understanding of these Weimar classics, to show their impact on contemporary cinema, and to inspire new research.
Each dossier consists of the following six sections:
PRELIMINARIES,
which includes links to the film’s full credits, restoration history, and recommended DVD editions for home viewing;
HISTORICAL ESSAYS & REVIEWS,
which presents archival documents to reconstruct the historical context of the “timeless” classics and recover buried references lost through time and canonization;
CONCEPTS & CONSTELLATIONS,
which illuminates some of the key social and philosophical discourses embedded in the film and brings them into dialogue with the present;
RELATED FILMS,
which offers links to films of the period to illustrate stylistic and thematic traditions;
AFTERLIVES,
which provides links to contemporary remakes, adaptations, and cross-media appropriations;
RECOMMENDED READINGS,
which compiles a short and current bibliography in chronological order.