page_title: Cinema of Germany
section_title: 1980–1989 popular productions
hierarchical_section_title: Cinema of Germany / History / 1945–1989 West Germany / 1980–1989 popular productions
caption_attribution_description: This file was uploaded with Commonist.
context_page_description: The film industry in Germany can be traced back to the late 19th century. German cinema made major technical and artistic contributions to early film, broadcasting and television technology. Babelsberg became a household synonym for the early 20th century film industry in Europe, similar to Hollywood later.
  Germany witnessed major changes to its identity during the 20th and 21st century. Those changes determined the periodisation of national cinema into a succession of distinct eras and movements.
context_section_description: Having achieved some of its goals, among them the establishment of state funding for the film industry and renewed international recognition for German films, the New German Cinema had begun to show signs of fatigue by the 1980s, even though many of its proponents continued to enjoy individual success.
  Among the commercial successes for German films of the 1980s were the Otto film series beginning in 1985 starring comedian Otto Waalkes, Wolfgang Petersen's adaptation of The NeverEnding Story (1984), and the internationally successful Das Boot (1981), which still holds the record for most Academy Award nominations for a German film (six). Other notable film-makers who came to prominence in the 1980s include producer Bernd Eichinger and directors Doris Dörrie, Uli Edel, and Loriot.
  Away from the mainstream, the splatter film director Jörg Buttgereit came to prominence in the 1980s. The development of arthouse cinemas (Programmkinos) from the 1970s onwards provided a venue for the works of less mainstream film-makers like Herbert Achternbusch, Hark Bohm, Dominik Graf, Oliver Herbrich, Rosa von Praunheim or Christoph Schlingensief.
  From the mid-1980s the spread of videocassette recorders and the arrival of private TV channels such as RTL Television provided new competition for theatrical film distribution. Cinema attendance, having rallied slightly in the late 1970s after an all-time low of 115.1 million visits in 1976, dropped sharply again from the mid-1980s to end at just 101.6 million visits in 1989. However, the availability of a back catalogue of films on video also allowed for a different relationship between the viewer and an individual film, while private TV channels brought new money into the film industry and provided a launch pad from which new talent could later move into film.
caption: Bernd Eichinger "star" at the Boulevard of Stars in Berlin.
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