| Popis: |
This chapter examines intercultural experience in Marten Persiel’s film This Ain’t California (2012). This ‘hybrid’ documentary defies simple categorisation within traditional borders, such as those between national and international film, and between fiction and non-fiction. I argue that the film’s particular, affective mode of remembering the GDR has broad appeal that extends beyond national film-viewing contexts. The case of This Ain’t California demonstrates how intercultural and international dialogue happens not only in conversations between domestic and international audiences of German films; intercultural exchange occurs on the level of the text itself, in the filmmaking processes and in the affective experience of the embodied spectator. Studies which seek to account for embodied responses on the part of the spectator offer the means to understand the appeal of films such as This Ain’t California. The portrayal of transcultural experience between East German youths and the Western pursuit of skateboarding resonate with the film’s potential for opening up new avenues for discussing life in the GDR, and the legacies of re-unification. With an understanding of the phenomenology of the spectator’s film experience, we can illuminate pathways for future, productive interdisciplinary studies of films and their impact at film festivals. |
