Bonus: New German Cinema and the Red Army Faction w/ guest Ryan Ruby

Bonus: New German Cinema and the Red Army Faction w/ guest Ryan Ruby

April 27, 2026 · 1h 54m · Season 2

About this episode

In this bonus episode, cohosts Jason Christian and Anthony Ballas discuss New German Cinema and the Red Army Faction with guest Ryan Ruby.

In this bonus episode, cohosts Jason Christian and Anthony Ballas speak with the literary critic Ryan Ruby about New German Cinema, particularly the directors Rainer Werner Fassbinder and Alexander Kluge, and the film movement's fascination with the Red Army Faction ( Rote Armee Fraktion ) A.K.A. the Baader–Meinhof Gang, an ultra-left militant group in West Germany that existed in various forms from 1970 to 1998. Ryan Ruby is the author of Context Collapse: A Poem Containing a History of Poetry (Seven Stories Press, 2024) and The Zero and the One: A Novel (Twelve Books, 2017). For his essays and reviews, which have recently appeared in such venues as Harper's , Bookforum , and the New Left Review , he has received the Silvers Prize in Literary Criticism. He lives in Berlin, where he is working on a book of creative nonfiction about the city's mass transit system, tentatively titled Ringbahn: On Berlin Time , which will be published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux in late 2027. _____________________ Ryan Ruby's forthcoming book on the cultural history of Berlin, with particular interest in the music scene and cinema of the 1970s The films Germany in Autumn (1978) and The Third…

People in this episode

Hosts: Jason Christian, Anthony Ballas

Guest: Ryan Ruby

Topics covered

Keywords

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: Seven Stories Press, Twelve Books, Harper's, Bookforum, New Left Review

Books & works: Context Collapse: A Poem Containing a History of Poetry, The Zero and the One: A Novel, Germany in Autumn, The Third Generation

Places: Berlin

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