On 28 February 1962, at the 8th West German Short Film Festival in Oberhausen, 26 West German filmmakers proclaimed the Oberhausen Manifesto. This moment marked a milestone in the development of German cinema – never before, and never again, would a break with existing production conditions be demanded, and induced, with such vehemence.
With a deliberately confrontational mixture between a crushing diagnosis of the German film industry and vehement emotionalism, the 26 signatories to the Oberhausen Manifesto claimed license to create a whole new German film. An essential component of the proclamation made in Oberhausen was the demand for the kind of production conditions that would enable them to put an end to the lethargy weighing down German film in the early 1960s. On the one hand, the Oberhauseners took up a political stance on film from the very beginning, and on the other they also declared themselves to be the creative spearhead in the fraught process of determining the form and content of German film to come…more
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