Kommunikation ökologischer Probleme im nonfiktionalen Film : Gesellschaftskritik und alternative Handlungsentwürfe

The subject of my master thesis is the theory, history and analysis of environmental documentaries. The thesis outlines how environmental issues have developed in the medium of documentary film in Germany since the 1950s. The historical and political contexts of these films are the increasing public awareness of environmental problems, the environmental movement and the anti-nuclear movement. Therefore, my study explores the relationship between documentary film and social movements theoretically and historically. These often partisan films emerged from outside as well as from within these movements. They are one important medium for social movements to frame the issues: to define a problem, explain its causes, communicate responsibilities and demands and mobilise the audience. Internationally, as well as in Germany, a shift has occurred from problem-oriented documentaries and films with a focus on protest to new solution-oriented films. This shift is connected to the environmental movement, where alternative lifestyles like veganism and practices of production like ecological farming are spreading and grassroots initiatives like energy cooperatives, Community Supported Agriculture or Transition Towns have emerged. I suggest a new research method based on a combination of the framing approach from social movement research by David A. Snow and Robert D. Benford and a film studies approach on visual and auditory rhetoric of films by Klaus Kanzog. The method is systematically applied in a comparative analysis of two films: Leben ausser Kontrolle (English: Life Running out of Control, Bertram Verhaag, D 2004) and Voices of Transition (Nils Aguilar, D/F 2012). The thesis uses this approach to explore how we can theoretically understand the stylistic differences between dominantly critical and new solution-oriented films and what implications this might have in mobilising the audience to action.