defilmtv1-6, Exercise 3: A label, not a single movement

Model answer:

The directors were quite different from one another, with no common manifesto beyond the Oberhausen statement. The label was applied by critics and by supporters abroad as a convenience. What they shared was a rejection of the earlier commercial cinema, an interest in the German past and present, and a personal, author-driven approach (Autorenfilm).

The period is usually said to have ended around the early 1980s, with Fassbinder's death in 1982 as a symbolic end. The wider causes were changed funding priorities, directors moving abroad or to other work, and an audience at home that never grew large.