Model Number ‘in transit’: Postnational Heimatfilm. Moving Multiculturalism to the Next Level

Abstract

In this paper I discuss how the films Andrea Staka‟s Fräulein and Yilmaz Arlslan‟s Brudermord explore the themes of ‚nationality„ and ‚postnationality„, both in terms of film-story content as well as film production. Fräulein presents the development of two immigrant characters who successfully realize a new home in Zurich out of a lack of home, when they are able to see their mother country and their host country not as binary opposites, but as an intercultural place within themselves. Brudermord criticizes Germany as anything but the promised land for those seeking a new home, but places the blame on both the host and the immigrant communities for stubbornly replicating and maintaining old boundaries, instead of adapting and working toward a necessary intercultural third reality. In addition, as evidenced by the multinational production teams of both films, these films self-reflectively create such an intercultural space in the process o making the films as well as in the film products themselves.

Keywords

• Postnational
• Heimatfilm
• Multiculturalism

Model Number ‘in transit’: Postnational Heimatfilm. Moving Multiculturalism to the Next Level

Abstract

In this paper I discuss how the films Andrea Staka‟s Fräulein and Yilmaz Arlslan‟s Brudermord explore the themes of ‚nationality„ and ‚postnationality„, both in terms of film-story content as well as film production. Fräulein presents the development of two immigrant characters who successfully realize a new home in Zurich out of a lack of home, when they are able to see their mother country and their host country not as binary opposites, but as an intercultural place within themselves. Brudermord criticizes Germany as anything but the promised land for those seeking a new home, but places the blame on both the host and the immigrant communities for stubbornly replicating and maintaining old boundaries, instead of adapting and working toward a necessary intercultural third reality. In addition, as evidenced by the multinational production teams of both films, these films self-reflectively create such an intercultural space in the process o making the films as well as in the film products themselves.

Keywords

• Postnational
• Heimatfilm
• Multiculturalism

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