• We have updated the guidelines regarding posting political content: please see the stickied thread on Website Issues.

Re-Imagining GDR Communism With KLEO

ramonmercado

CyberPunk
Joined
Aug 19, 2003
Messages
58,270
Location
Eblana
Hopefully there will be a vid/recording of the seminar; if so I'll post a link here.

Re-Imagining GDR Communism with KLEO​

Date: 26 Mar - 26 Mar 2024
Time: 16:00 - 17:30
Venue: Galbraith Seminar Room

A seminar by Rebecca Carr (TCD) as a part of the School of Languages, Literatures and Cultural Studies Seminar Series.
Kleo, a fictional Netflix series, portrays a loyal Stasi agent (and contract killer) being imprisoned to hide a conspiracy in the German Democratic Republic (GDR). Then "The Changes" of 1989-91 release the title character from prison into the recently reunified nation. The dark comedy-thriller exemplifies how mainstream entertainment evolves to continue exploring cultural memory. The show engages with the tumultuous period in two significant ways; it defamiliarizes the experience for witnesses and makes it familiar for “learning viewers” with indirect or no previous knowledge by storytelling in an emerging, popular style. For witnesses, viewing seismic upheaval through contemporary humour invites reconsideration of official or widely circulated narratives. For learning audiences, such as those born after reunification (including the main actor), the show is one of a growing number of filmic texts that address historical fear and uncertainty through the current conventions of postmodern parody and pastiche (see Jojo Rabbit, Death of Stalin and Hunters). Kleo re-imagines communism, the West, and Die Wende, so viewers across temporal, geographic, and genre divides continue learning from the past.

Rebecca Carr uses cinema to research identity, culture and trauma narratives. She wrote her PhD (2021, TCD) on national mythology and recovery in films from the genre she terms “aftermath cinema”. She holds BAs in Psychology, and in Film, Literature and Drama, and an MPhil in Textual and Visual Studies.
The School of Languages, Literatures and Cultural Studies Seminar Series (SLLCS) promotes Literary and Cultural Studies, including political and social thought, narratology and imagology, film, textual and visual studies, questions surrounding language learning and translation studies, and also practice-led research. We encourage comparative, interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary research, as our intellectual inquiry is in the service of national and international debate and knowledge advancement, particularly on the construction of identity and otherness in literature and culture. The seminar series provides a forum for the dissemination and exchange of current and developing research from staff and postgraduate researchers within the school, and also from national and international guest speakers.

Please indicate if you have any access requirements, such as ISL/English interpreting, so that we can facilitate you in attending this event. Contact: [email protected] and [email protected]

Trinity Long Room Hub Arts & Humanities Research Institute
Trinity College Dublin, The University of Dublin.
College Green, Dublin 2, Ireland

https://www.tcd.ie/trinitylongroomh...2024/re-imagining-gdr-communism-with-kleo.php
 
Will they be discussing any Fortean subjects?
 
Will they be discussing any Fortean subjects?

Here's a review, it's well worth watching if you have Netflix. If you don't it can be cough found online cough.

Anyone still mourning the end of Killing Eve may find macabre comfort in Kleo (Netflix) an intriguing assassin revenge thriller from Germany with a Villanelle-style preference for violence with a strong aesthetic. Jella Haase is Kleo Straub, an unregistered agent for a top secret Stasi department whose main job is to nip from East Berlin to West to eliminate enemies of the state.

At first, it seems as if the series might have also borrowed that distinctive Killing Eve sense of humour. It begins in 1987, as Kleo picks her way through the sewers of Berlin, offering a gift to a rat she has nicknamed Comrade Lenin. She makes her way to a neon-lit nightclub with a knife tucked into her suspenders, and locks eyes with her target across the dancefloor. It is high-energy, breathlessly gruesome and early proof that Kleo is incredibly efficient at what she does, which is ruthlessly getting rid of whomever the state tells her is next. “The Wall will come down before she screws up,” says one character, not so much dropping a trail of breadcrumbs for the viewer as leaving the entire loaf behind. ...

https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2022/aug/19/kleo-review-netflix-german-killing-eve
 
Back
Top