Film Culture in Transition Series

Book 50

Film History as Media Archaeology

by Thomas Elsaesser

Published 1 September 2016

Since cinema has entered the digital era, its very nature has come under renewed scrutiny. Countering the 'death of cinema' debate, Film History as Media Archaeology presents a robust argument for the cinema's current status as a new epistemological object, of interest to philosophers, while also examining the presence of moving images in the museum and art spaces as a challenge for art history. The current study is the fruit of some twenty years of research and writing at the interface of film history, media theory and media archaeology by one of the acknowledged pioneers of the 'new film history' and 'media archaeology'. It joins the efforts of other media scholars to locate cinema's historical emergence and subsequent transformations within the broader field of media change and interaction, as we experience them today.

Harun Farocki

by Thomas Elsaesser, Maren Grimm, and Jan Verwoert

Published 1 January 2004

For more than thirty years Farocki was a filmmaker, documentarist, film-essayist and installation artist. What preoccupied him above all was not so much an image of life, but the life of images, as they surround us in the newspapers, the cinema, history books, user manuals, posters, CCTV footage and advertising. [-]His vast oeuvre of some sixty films includes three feature films (Zwischen den Kriegen/Between the Wars, Etwas wird sichtbar: Vietnam/In Your Eyes: Vietnam, Wie Man sieht/As You See), essay films (e.g. Images of the World-Inscription of War), critical media-pieces, experimental work, children's features for television, historical film essays (e.g. on Peter Lorre), `learning-films' in the tradition of Brecht (e.g. Workers Leaving the Factory) and installation pieces (e.g. Still Life). [-][-]In this monograph, Elsaesser approaches Farocki's work from different critical perspectives, as well as reflecting on his extraordinary biography. The volume is complemented by interviews, a selection of writings by Farocki and an annotated filmography.

A Second Life

by Thomas Elsaesser

Published 1 January 1996

German cinema is best known for its art cinema and its long line of outstanding individual directors. The double spotlight on these two subject has only deepened the obscurity surrounding the popular cinema. A Second Life performs a kind of archaeology on a period largely overlooked: the first two decades of German cinema. This collection of essays by established authors refocuses the terms of a debate that will develop in the years to come concerning the historical and cultural significance of popular cinema in Wilhelmine Germany.

Fassbinder's Germany

by Thomas Elsaesser

Published 1 January 1996

Rainer Werner Fassbinder is one of the most prominent and important authors of post-war European cinema. Thomas Elsaesser is the first to write a thoroughly analytical study of his work. He stresses the importance of a closer understanding of Fassbinder's career through a re-reading of his films as textual entities. Approaching the work from different thematic and analytical perspectives, Elsaesser offers both an overview and a number of detailed readings of crucial films, while also providing a European context for Fassbinder's own coming to terms with fascism. This title is available in the OAPEN Library - http://www.oapen.org.

Double Trouble

by Jan Simons and Thomas Elsaesser

Published 4 January 1994

Double Trouble highlights the career of Dutch scriptwriter and television producer Chiem van Houweninge, well-known for his long-running TV comedy series and as author of episodes for TV detective series. Double Trouble gives Van Houweninge's own views on writing and filming in television prime importance, in the context of the history of popular television and his scriptwriting classes at the University of Amsterdam. This is completed by a round-table discussion with other writers about the double tasks of scriptwriting and producing.

European Cinema

by Thomas Elsaesser

Published 1 January 2005

In the face of renewed competition from Hollywood since the early 1980s and the challenges posed to Europe's national cinemas by the fall of the Wall in 1989, independent filmmaking in Europe has begun to re-invent itself. European Cinema: Face to Face with Hollywood re-assesses the different debates and presents a broader framework for understanding the forces at work since the 1960s. These include the interface of -world cinema and the rise of Asian cinemas, the importance of the international film festival circuit, the role of television, as well as the changing aesthetics of auteur cinema. New audiences have different allegiances, and new technologies enable networks to reshape identities, but European cinema still has an important function in setting critical and creative agendas, even as its economic and institutional bases are in transition.