Introduction

An increasing number of German language teachers at the secondary and postsecondary levels in the United States and abroad have started to use short films in the classroom in recent years. Short films such as the famous Schwarzfahrer (1993, Pepe Danquart, Germany) have inspired German teachers in many institutional contexts around the world and at various levels of instruction to create original classroom activities and pubfish lesson plans or develop wikis to discuss teaching strategies using short film. (1) It is not surprising that this medium has become popular in language classes in general: the running time of short films is often around 15 minutes, enabling teachers to begin and end a film with pre- and post-viewing activities over the course of one day's lesson plan. It is also not surprising that instructors of German language and culture, in particular, have exhibited a new wave of interest: Germany has one of the most robust short film industries and some of the largest short film festivals in the world. Despite this growing popularity in German-speaking culture and increasing interest among German teachers, there has been relatively little research conducted on effective ways to implement short films into language and culture classes.

The goals of the present article are twofold.

First, I will provide an overview of the advantages to using short film in German language instruction. Examining the unique characteristics of this genre, I intend to show how shorts provide instructors with new opportunities to engage their students in interactive communication, critical thinking, and intercultural learning. Secondly, I will argue that German short film as a course topic or thematic unit allows students to explore a number of new areas of contemporary culture that bring instruction in line with the national Standards for Foreign Language Learning: Preparing for the 21st Century (1996/ 2006). While discussing several examples of German short films, I will show that many aspects of shorts, including technical and aesthetic innovations, the history of the genre, subject matter, and the contemporary short film scene in Germanspeaking culture, provide teachers with an interesting, overarching theme around which they can build a course that promotes cultural literacy and fits effectively into a standards-based curriculum.

Characteristics of Short Films

Before discussing the application of short films in the German language classroom, I will address some terminology and describe some characteristics common to many short films. As previous film scholars have noted, a definition of short film is difficult to formulate when one considers the diversity of these films in the past and present (Wolf; Kraja and Gjuzi; Welke). The most obvious parameter to use in differentiating shorts from feature films is length: short films are between a few seconds and 60 minutes, although most are about 15 minutes in length. Since the earliest years of the film industry, length was often a criterion used to distinguish film types, including "one-reelers" (ca. 11 minutes) and "two-reelers" (Monaco). As film curator Reinhard W. Wolf notes, because of technical limitations, most films in...