Moving Pictures: Film, History, and the Politics of Emotion

Johannes von Moltke investigates the interplay between history, emotions, and politics in the cinema. Focusing on the cinematic representation of German history in particular, he studies the ways in which filmmakers have used different genres (such as melodrama, comedy, or thrillers) to elicit specific emotions about the historical figures and events presented on film. As our historical distance from the “Third Reich” and the Holocaust increases, von Moltke suggests, these emotions shift in subtle but surprising ways. The project investigates not only the formal construction of these films and their appeal to spectator emotion, but also the broader political implications of this shift in our emotional relationship to history. It outlines a theory of spectatorship as an “affective practice” that both defines particular viewing publics and participates in the construction of community through emotion.