Dr Claudia Sandberg is a Research Fellow within Humanities at the University of Southampton.
I studied at the University of Hamburg and The University of Arizona. I completed my PhD thesis in 2011 at the University of Southampton and have joined the Film Studies Department as a research fellow in the same year.
My doctoral thesis, titled Peter Lilienthal. Homeless by Choice, focused on German-Jewish-Uruguayan filmmaker Peter Lilienthal (born 1929), whose experience in Latin American exile during the Nazi period informed his subsequent career. Lilienthal addresses issues of collective resistance to political oppression in Chile and Nicaragua. While Lilienthal is usually associated with the New German Cinema, my thesis explored his position as an author who is (dis)-located in between national and ethnic borders. In analysing Lilienthal's films and studying filmmaking practices and their reception, I considered his texts as a form of diasporic cinema.
My current research focuses on cinematic links between Germany and Latin America, more specifically Chile and Argentina.
Part of my research concerns Chile and Chileans in East and West German feature films and documentaries during the 1970s and 1980s. A number of Chilean émigré artists and intellectuals worked on both sides of the German border and made films for the West German and East German film industries. I would like to know to what extent their work was shaped by the divergent ideological, political and cultural conditions in East and West. This project is co-funded by the Berlin-based DEFA foundation.
I am also interested in the work of German-born filmmakers in Argentina. In 2013, I will be spending much of my time in Buenos Aires to do explorative research in this area.