This work brings together film specialists from Europe and the United States to explore German film history from the late 19th to the early 21st century. It re-evaluates traditional areas of interest in German cinema (such as Weimar cinema, Nazi propaganda, and New German Cinema), and looks at neglected aspects, including early cinema, the cinema of the GDR, popular genre traditions, questions of national cinema and identity, and German film's transnational connections to Hollywood, as well as to exile and migrant cinemas. It places particular emphasis on genres and stars in the wider context of state and industry at home and abroad. The collection comprises five thematic sections: popular cinema; stars; institutional and cultural frameworks; cultural politics; and transnational connections.