Get Totalitarianism on Screen: The Art and Politics of The Lives PDF

From its production in 1950, to the autumn of the Berlin Wall in 1989, the German Democratic Republic's Ministry for kingdom safeguard heavily monitored its nation's electorate. often called the Staatssicherheit or Stasi, this association used to be considered as some of the most repressive intelligence corporations on the planet. Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck's 2006 movie The Lives of Others ( Das Leben der Anderen) has acquired overseas acclaim -- together with an Academy Award, an self reliant Spirit Award, and a number of German movie Awards -- for its relocating portrayal of East German lifestyles lower than the pervasive surveillance of the Stasi.

In Totalitarianism on Screen, political theorists Carl Eric Scott and F. Flagg Taylor IV gather most sensible students to research the movie from philosophical and political views. Their essays confront the character and legacy of East Germany's totalitarian executive and description the explanations why such regimes endure.

Other than journal and newspaper stories, little has been written approximately The Lives of Others. This quantity brings German scholarship at the subject to an English-speaking viewers for the 1st time and explores the difficulty of presidency surveillance at a time whilst the topic is frequently front-page information. that includes contributions from German president Joachim Gauck, favourite singer-songwriter Wolf Biermann, reporters Paul Hockenos and Lauren Weiner, and famous students Paul Cantor and James Pontuso, Totalitarianism on Screen contributes to the turning out to be scholarship on totalitarianism and may curiosity historians, political theorists, philosophers, and lovers of the film.