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his essay analyzes three later films of Arnold Fanck: S.O.S Eisberg (1933), Die Tochter des Samurai (1937) and Ein Robinson (1940). Best known for the classical mountain films (Bergfilme) which he, along with Leni Riefenstahl and Luis Trenker, pioneered in the 1920s, Fanck continued to direct feature-length films through Ein Robinson. These films have been the subject of far less critical interest than Fanck’s mountain films. While S.O.S Eisberg, Die Tochter des Samurai and Ein Robinson are not classical mountain films, they all contain scenes that would fit in Fanck’s more canonical works. The three films also share a thematic element, namely that of an individual who initially chafes at the restrictions of a group, be it an expedition or a nation. Furthermore, the films show a process of politicization in Fanck’s oeuvre. As the popularity of Fanck’s mountain films declined in the early 1930s, he turned to more political themes in the hope of remaining relevant within the National Socialist film landscape. While S.O.S. Eisberg displays much of the Bergfilm genre transported to the Arctic, Die Tochter des Samurai and Ein Robinson range geographically farther afield and more explicitly take up themes of the individual versus the collective that resonate within National Socialist Germany. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the political effects of the representation of historical paintings in film. It contends that the inclusion of this 'older' form, painting, and of the world associated with its popularity brings a mythological past to bear on contemporary philosophical and political issues in a novel and complex manner. Using the formal qualities of film, like montage and close-up, film makers can reimage and reimagine the place and role of painted works within the contemporary worlds in which the films are set. The interruption of one world into the other, the painted past into the photoreal present or future, uncovers new continuities and makes the distant past a matter of concern for the problems of the present. Using the philosophy and theories of Jacques Rancière, Bonnie Honig, Robert Pippin, and Roland Barthes, this article examines the representation of painting in Andrei Tarkovsky's Solaris (1972) and the collaborative film Germany in Autumn (1978). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article deals with the depiction of national (socio)political crises fictional(ized) US-American presidents are faced with in exemplary TV series of the 1980s and 1990s. Based on the premise that the audiovisual depiction of crises serves an exemplary function for the systems of the narrative‘s diegesis, the article attempts to analyse the effects of personification and representation in the fictionalized and the fictional handling of (socio)political crises. As a sample it refers to the form of the presidential biopic as depicted in Kennedy (1983) and The West Wing (1999-2006; both NBC). The little-known and even lesser-analysed TV miniseries Kennedy is used as an example for fictionalized crises handled by fictionalized leaders John and Robert Kennedy whereas the much more widely-known prime-time series The West Wing will be used as an exemplary point of reference how these fictionalized ways of handling (socio)political crises find their way into larger-scale narratives and entirely fictional formats. Finally, the results of the analysis of the discourse will lead to a reflection about how good or bad leadership are (re)imagined in these particular works of fiction and how (much) they are tied to particular characters acting as good (or bad) examples for the system they represent. Following this set of ideas, the article‘s hypothesis is that popular discourse often metonymically ties the (un)successful handling of a crisis to the responsible person and the outcome serves to teach the spectator how the representative of a given norm system (i. e. the democracy of the United States of America) goes about protecting the norms he comes to represent to serve as an example for the way history and collective identity are shaped through crises.