| Summary: | Over the past ten years, Mila Ganeva has written two books in the series Screen Cultures: German Film and the Visual published by Camden House. Both studies map German visual culture in relation to female agency, starting with the Weimar years, 1918–1933, in the first book, and moving on to what the Germans call the “long decade”, stretching from 1939–1955, in the second. In the latter volume, Ganeva focuses on film and fashion from the perspective of German female consumers and spectators, and it is immediately obvious that her engagement with cinema is presented without any auxiliary theoretical discussion regarding the remits of either mass culture or visual studies. In particular, the study would have benefitted from a short introduction of the “rubble film” (films set in a city or landscape of ruins), preferably based on Robert Shandley’s study, which is also referenced in the book’s bibliography. I find it particularly odd that she does not link her own study more intimately with Hester Baer’s work on the topic in order to map out her subject matter for the reader, in the introductory chapter (Dismantling; “Film”).
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