Timelines

Migration is a natural part of living systems, and human history is no exception. Yet it remains one of the most debated public issues of our time.

Both people and borders move. Who is allowed to move, and who is granted rights, lies at the heart of how nations define belonging. In Germany and the United States alike, these debates have been deeply intertwined with evolving ideas of race and ethnicity.

These timelines trace how citizenship and belonging have been constructed, challenged, and redefined through laws, social movements, global events, and cultural works — and how those histories continue to shape the present.

1968

“Guest-Worker Cinema”

In the course of the 1960’s, the so-called “guest worker cinema” evolves in the light of the growing number of migrant workers in the FRG, especially migrants from Turkey. The focus of these movies lies on topics like “otherness”, “foreignness” and oppression. In spite of the fact that these oversimplifying representations support the construction of imagined contradictions and differences between e.g. the “Turkish culture” and the “German culture”, the movies challenge the viewing habits of the German-majority audience.

Archiv für Filmposter

Filmplakat "Katzelmacher", BRD 1968

Rainer Werner Fassbinder (Regie) gilt als einer der wichtigsten Vertreter des Neuen Deutschen Films, der in seinen Filmen „Katzelmacher“ (1969) und „Angst essen Seele auf“ erstmals Geschichten von Arbeitsmigrant*innen auf die Leinwände der BRD bringt.

Germany

Sources

Göktürk, Deniz (2000a): Migration und Kino: Subnationale Mitleidskultur oder transnationale Rollenspiele? In: Carmine Chiellino (Hrsg.): Interkulturelle Literatur in Deutschland. Metzler Verlag, Stuttgart u. Weimar.
Jenseits der subnationalen Leidkultur: Transnationale Rollenspiele im Kino Deniz Göktürk.

Related Events

1980

Birth of Migrant Cinema

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UNITED STATES

GERMANY

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