Skip to content
Lecture

Professor David Peimer
Post-War Renaissance in German Film: Fassbinder, Herzog, and Wenders

Saturday 27.05.2023

Summary

Professor David Peimer explores the life and work of four of the most significant and interesting post-war German filmmakers: Rainer Warner Fassbinder, Werner Herzog, Wim Wenders, and Volker Schlondorff.

Professor David Peimer

An image of David Peimer

David Peimer is a Professor of Literature, Film and Theatre in the UK. He has worked for the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, New York University (Global Division) and was a Fulbright Scholar at Columbia University. Born in South Africa, David has won numerous awards for playwriting and directing in New York, UK, Berlin, EU Parliament (Brussels), Athens, Budapest, Zululand and more. He has most recently directed Dame Janet Suzman in his own play, Joanna’s Story, at London Jewish Book Week. He has published widely with books including: Armed Response: Plays from South Africa, the digital book, Theatre in the Camps. He is on the board of the Pinter Centre (London), and has been involved with the Mandela Foundation, Vaclav Havel Foundation and directed a range of plays at Mr Havel’s Prague theatre.

Well, I haven’t seen that many lately in the last eight, 10 years. Certainly post-Covid or even pre-Covid, perhaps there are many that come to the same idea. I think these guys were so obsessed with struggling to understand from their outsider position, struggling to understand their own parents and grandparents generation of the war and history, all these big themes. I think they were obsessed in a way that they had to tell the stories. And I’m not sure if that same level of obsession exists today. Even looking at post East Germany and West Germany post the fall of communism.

Yes. They all looked at power and authoritarianism in love relationships, in family, and then for Herzog in the big grandiose mythical stories of history.