The article analyzes the ways chronotope is created in German Expressionist fi lms of the 1920s and does it with the view to highlight their connection with the socio-cultural and historical situation of the period by using the concepts proposed by K. Jaspers and J. Ortega y Gasset. The author focuses on the techniques used by directors for constructing expressionist fi lm reality. At the foundation of all these techniques lies spatio-temporal schematism or chronotope. The article proposes a certain approach to studying fi lms as “documents” and gives a new perspective for looking at expressionist fi lms as an artistic project of creating “symbolic cinematography”; as a way of refl ecting upon the cultural breakdown that occurred in this period; as the historical imaginary, in which elements of the modern socio-psychological situation of society are expressed.