Translator's Introduction Arnold Fanck (1889-1974), pioneer of the specifically German genre of the Bergfilm (mountain film), began life as a sickly child with breathing problems. As he recounts in his 1973 autobiography Er...
Of those actors and directors who have come to be associated with the genre of the Heimatfilm, one name remains both curiously present and absent: Luis Trenker. On the one hand, Trenker continues to be present in the public...
The days preceding the September 11, 1881 landslides in Elm, Switzerland form the basis for Franz Hohler’s historical novella Die Steinflut. Like many of Hohler’s other works, Die Steinflut focuses on environmental issues....
The geography teacher of the Imperial Russian Humanistic High School of Baku, Transcaucasia, poses a challenge that resonates throughout Ali and Nino: "It can therefore be said, my children, that it is partly your...
Although mountains have featured prominently in the history of cinema from its very beginnings to the present, the advent of
the mountain film is often associated with the Weimar cinema of the 1920s and 1930s. Arnold Fanck is...
This 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 LeniRiefenstahl...
