EU Cohesion Policy and European Integration: The Dynamics of EU Budget and Regional Policy Reform

image in Arslan’s films, the way Petzold’s camera seems to stare for an uncomfortably long time at what is going on—or not—in the frame or the way Schanelec drains her films almost of all narrative to the point of being impossible to watch in the view of some critics. To underline his thesis, Abel bases each chapter on a series of rigorously close readings of scenes he identifies as emblematic in each director’s oeuvre, inviting us to stare more intently at the way the images are constructed. The strong introduction is predicated on Abel’s close reading of Hochhäusler’s short film Séance, part of the portmanteau Deutschland 09: 13 kurze Filme zur Lage der Nation (2009), a focus which neatly foregrounds the methodological approach he will adopt throughout the book. It is refreshing, provocative and wholly apposite to the argument he constructs. He contends that what links all the directors is their concern for Germany, and posits their work as a ‘counter-cinema’ that endeavours to transform German cinema from the inside out, akin to Deleuze and Guattari’s notion of ‘minor’ literature. Thus these films share an ‘ethnological gaze’ that ‘shows contemporary Germany as if from the perspective of a stranger’ (17), and a utopian desire to imagine a future Germany that is free from the emotional and spiritual damage wrought by neoliberalism mechanisms and attitudes. If these filmmakers are subversive, revolutionary even, then it is in seeking to provide a sharp ‘itinerary of the present’ (23), motivated by a ‘passionate and innovative effort to find new ways of describing and analysing the present of a country that continues to struggle with finding its identity two decades after its unification’ (22). There are some occasionally repetitive passages throughout the monograph, and stylistically there is a tendency, perhaps, to overuse italics, which dilutes their emphatic force at times, but these are minor quibbles. In producing the first full-length study of the Berlin School, Abel has produced a seminal reference work for all scholars working in the field of German Studies.Moreover, by virtue of his meditations on form, texture and aesthetics, Abel’s work deserves to be seen alongside the work of John Orr in its thoughtful reflections on contemporary cinema’s innovative engagement with reality.