This article challenges the widely held claim that Straub and Huillet’s early work deals primarily with discourses prevalent in German history and culture. While focusing on the film-makers’ first short film Machorka-Muff (1962), the author argues that, aside from dealing explicitly with the politics of German rearmament in the 1950s, the film is similarly inscribed by the contemporary politics in France, namely the Algerian War. Moreover, in German exile, the French émigré film-makers make their films from the position of a borderline, a figure that reappears in the formal structure of their films. © 2010 Taylor & Francis Group, LLC. All rights reserved.

Straub–Huillet Young German film French new wave Border theory Exile Algerian war German rearmament

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