Short Films by the Signatories, 1958-67
Short Films by the Signatories, 1958-67. In February 1962, at the eighth annual Oberhausen Short Film Festival, a brief but impassioned manifesto was signed by 26 filmmakers and film professionals roundly criticizing conventional contemporary German cinema and calling for the creation of a new type of feature film based on new freedoms and a new type of film language. This exhortation to radical change set the intellectual and spiritual groundwork for the blossoming of Das Neue Kino (The New Cinema), as practiced by signatories including Alexander Kluge, Edgar Reitz, Peter Schamoni, Haro Senft, and Herbert Vesely, along with Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Werner Herzog, Wim Wenders, and many others.