This collection by West German film directors provides a dramatic and comprehensive overview of the New German Cinema and its history which since the 1960s has been marked by crisis and confrontation. Battling against political and aesthetic constraints, the filmmakers represented here demand that film not be a narrow defined means of escape or distraction, nor a diminishing of historical events or memory, and not a reduction of human and artistic experience. No serious observer of new German film can ignore the obstinate, defiant, and utopian visions reflected in this unique collection, the first of its kind to appear in any language.