Hans-Jürgen Syberberg

Critics and audiences have alternately labeled the films of Hans-Jürgen Syberberg brilliant and boring, absorbing and pretentious. Stylistically, there is no question that Syberberg is the most controversial of all the New German directors and a figure who has long been at the vanguard of the resurgence of experimental filmmaking in his homeland.

Syberberg's most characteristic films examine German history in light of World War II: a documentary, for example, about Richard Wagner's daughter-in-law, who was a close friend of Hitler ( emph {The Confessions of Winifred Wagner, 1975). But especially ``historical'' is his trilogy covering one hundred years of Germany's past, including, most famously, emph {Hitler, A Film from Germany (1977). In this film and other works, Syberberg unites fictional narrative and documentary footage in a style that is at once cinematic and theatrical, mystical and magical.

This book is the first edited volume in English devoted to Syberberg, and contains a number of interviews as well as essays on, or reviews of, his work. emph {Hans-Jürgen Syberberg: Essays and Interviews is a significant contribution not only to the study of this important film director's emph {oeuvre, but also to the study of German history and politics in the second half of the twentieth century.

Robert Cardullo has published a number of books, among them emph {European Directors and Their Films, emph {World Directors in Dialogue, and emph {Playing to the Camera. He taught for four decades both inside and outside the United States, and now lives in Helsinki, Finland.