| This thesis explores the contemporary tensions between home and travel in German film as they transform under the in uences of Europeanization and globalization. It refrains from viewing the Heimatfilm as a separate genre that has been predominantly understood as a local principle, whose foil is the travel and road film as allegedly more vital and mobile engagements with geo-political developments. Instead, Heimat is the overarching principle of my dissertation with the goal of formulating the New Heimatfilm as a hybrid genre comprising elements from the rural, urban and road film that demonstrate a conceptual shift within German film. Therefore, the New Heimatfilm features mobility and dwelling as strongly intertwined with each other, and provides both local explorations and a larger transgressive and comparative perspective.;The theoretical framework I propose relies on theories of space, globalization, and genre, such as those developed by Michel de Certeau, Ulrich Beck, and Rick Altman. Similarly to the deterritorialization of Heimat in accordance with the Spatial Turn, I argue that Heimat also transgresses its conventional generic categorization. This is an unfinished process, since we are moving towards the New Heimatfilm. The figure of movement, the flâneur as the modern figure par excellence, aids in this endeavor. Within the urban surroundings of Second Modernity, the conjunction of Heimat and the urban space brings forth a new form of flânerie that revitalizes both concepts.;There are burgeoning and ongoing discourses on Heimat, its new spatial configurations and European identity, but they remain separate. My dissertation views these concepts as intertwined and discusses the possibility of a European Heimat as further step within the conceptual shift of the Heimat discourse and Heimatfilm genre. |
