MOVIE TALK: GO FOR ZUCKER
Sunday, April 30th - 4:30 pm., @ the Mary Riepma Ross Media Arts Center
 
Professor Marco Abel will discuss the relationship between the film's tone--comedic--and its subject matter: Jewish culture in Germany. He writes: “What the film quite obviously is responding to is the question, in how far is it possible/ok to make fun of Jewish rituals in Germany, 60 years after the end of WWII? This central issue is at times further inflected by the particular relation between East and West Germany, both before the reunification and thereafter. So, in a way the film is asking two questions: What is the state of German-Jewish relations in the 21st century? What is the state of Intra-German relations in the 2nd decade after the fall of the wall? A critical question one could discuss is then, with regard to the film, in how far it is "appropriate" or productive to pose these questions in form of a comedy? Is it perhaps the case that these questions can be ONLY posed through a comedy, and if so, why? And even if not, what effect does the generic choice have on the audience that is confronted with these questions?”
 
Marco Abel is an Assistant Professor of English at UNL where he primarily teaches film history and theory. His first book, Violent Affect: Literature, Cinema, and Critique After Representation, is forthcoming with the University of Nebraska Press. He is currently at work on his second book, tentatively entitled Post-Wall Cinema: German Film Culture in the Shadows of Unification. Two essays by him on contemporary German cinema can be accessed at here and here.
 
The movie talk will follow the 3:00 showing of GO FOR ZUCKER. Admission to the Movie Talk is free. Admission to the screening is at regular admission prices.