The Last Laugh: Weimar Cinema in 2026

Analogies to the Weimar Republic are everywhere these days, some more helpful than others. They nevertheless signal for us a feeling that our own societies might be entering a similar period of crisis and transformation as the one that shook European society in the years preceding the Second World War. But how useful are these analogies in our globalized, digital world of 2026? 

This class returns to the cinema of Weimar Germany to help answer this question landing smack dab in the middle of a transforming 1920s Weimar Republic with F.W. Murnau's 1924 silent masterpiece, THE LAST LAUGH (DER LETZTE MANN). We'll see how the revolutionary moving camera transformed cinematography, and learn how the Weimar film industry became a key site for later film historians and artists to study modernity and its contradictions, lessons we are still grappling with to this day.

This class will be taught by Matthew Ellis, Adjunct Professor of English at Portland State University, film and media historian and theorist.

Enrollment is limited to 18 students.

Questions? Email us at education@moviemadness.org