Hugo Fagandini (KCL) - 2016-17 Students
hugo.fagandini@kcl.ac.uk

The use of Krautrock soundtracks in the films of the New German Cinema

This project will seek to examine overlaps and stylistic parallels between two concurrent, spontaneous, large-scale artistic “movements” in post-war West Germany: namely the avant-garde and experimental popular music scene commonly referred to as “Krautrock”; and the new cinematic practices that later came under the banner of the “Young German Film” and the “New German Cinema”. Both of these grew out of their proponents’ dissatisfaction with the existing modes of expression with which they were presented, both by the largely discredited cultural values of their native society and by the sense of Anglo-American cultural hegemony, and thus out of the need to develop these or invent new ones in order to reflect their own sense of identity. This project will examine this through instances in which music by “Krautrock” artists is used by contemporary West German filmmakers in their own work, and explore not only its effect as part of the filmic experience, but what decisions may have been behind its inclusion in the first place.