By reviewing a series of newsreels and films against a backdrop of German and European foreign policy, this talk will explore the media representation of the European colonial project after World War II. Halle seeks to chart out how in the post-war era, and in the transition from direct colonial control to neo-colonial entanglement, a new developmental model emerged: Lebensraum and Mission civilisatrice gave way to development aid and humanitarian relief.

The decolonization process is violent and partisan but given the “success” of the anticolonial forces, decolonization must generate a new relation to the former colonies for a “post-colonial era” to be possible. Thus, Halle will review how depictions of anti-colonial violence and pacification gave way to a depiction of development aid. Such developmentalism, Halle argues, continues to shape German and EU relations to the present. He will map out the difficult path from a colonial gaze to an eye-level cooperation that is ostensibly the goal of current EU foreign policy and investment.


Randall Halle is the Klaus W. Jonas Professor of German Film and Cultural Studies at the University of Pittsburgh. He directs the European Studies Center/Jean Monnet European Union Center of Excellence at Pitt, as well as the Critical European Culture Studies PhD Program. His essays have appeared in journals such as EuropeNow, The International Journal of Cultural Policy, and New German Critique. He is the author of, among others, German Film after Germany: Toward a Transnational Aesthetic (University of Illinois Press, 2008), The Europeanization of Cinema: Interzones and Imaginative Communities (University of Illinois Press, 2014), and Visual Alterity: Seeing Difference in Cinema (University of Illinois Press, 2021). His research is focused now on Europe’s Moving Images.

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