Cinéclub Podcast #11 is the second edition of the podcast designed to tie in with the release of the Cinéclub fanzine, which came out last month. The zine features a big piece on cinematic treatments of the German urban guerilla group The Red Army Faction and one key film there is The Lost Honour of Katharina Blum from 1976, directed by Volker Schlöndorff and Margharethe von Trotta and based on the book by Heinrich Boll.

The eponymous protagonist of Katharina Blum is an ordinary woman who finds herself the subject of a police raid and subsequent interrogation after spending the night with a suspected member of an RAF-style terrorist group. She is hounded by the media, who collude unethically with the police, and push to her limits. The film ends with a shooting.

To find out more I spoke to Julian Preece. Julian is a Professor of German at Swansea University and the author of a BFI Classics monograph on The Lost Honour of Katharina Blum which was released in 2022, as well as Baader-Meinhof and the Novel, published in 2012, and various articles in academic journals on the RAF or, as he refers to them in this discussion, the ‘RAF’.

In our conversation we discuss the New German Cinema; the theme of surveillance; the film’s references to famous media images of the Red Army Faction; the importance of the musical score; and the subsequent films the directors made on similar subjects.

You can also find this episode on…

* Apple Podcasts

* Pocket Casts

* I will no longer be uploading podcasts to Spotify and have removed all previous episodes of the podcast from that platform. It’s something I’ve been meaning to do for ages, because Spotify is a transparently evil company that delights in ripping off musicians, promoting AI slop, and enabling genocide in Palestine.

Show notes

* Buy the Cinéclub fanzine

* The ‘Red Army Faction on Film’ article includes writing on The Lost Honour of Katharina Blum as well as The German Sisters and The Legend of Rita, also discussed in the episode

* Julian’s BFI Classics book on The Lost Honour of Katharina Blum

* Julian’s book Baader-Meinhof and the Novel

* The Lost Honour of Katharina Blum is, frustratingly, not available to stream at present. It is available on Blu-ray in the following editions:

* Studio Canal

* Criterion Collection

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit cineclub.substack.com