Operating between film theory, media philosophy, archival practice, and audiovisual research, Jiri Anger focuses on the relationship between figuration and materiality in early films, experimental found footage cinema, and video essays. Would it be possible to do film theory from below, through the perspective of moving-image objects, of their multifarious details and facets, however marginal, unintentional, or aleatory they might be? Could we treat scratches, stains, and shakes in archival footage as speculatively and aesthetically generative features? Do these material actors have the capacity to create “weird shapes” within the figurative image that decenter, distort, and transform the existing conceptual and methodological frameworks? Building on his theoretical as well as practical experience with the recently digitized corpus of the first Czech films, created by Jan Kríženecký between 1898 and 1911, the author demonstrates how technological defects and accidents in archival films shape their aesthetic function and our understanding of the materiality of film in the digital age. The specific clashes between the figurative and material spheres are understood through the concept of a “crack-up.” This term, developed by Francis Scott Fitzgerald and theoretically reimagined by Gilles Deleuze, allows us to capture the convoluted relationship between figuration and materiality as inherent to the medium of film, containing negativity and productivity, difference and simultaneity, contingency and fate, at the same time, even within the tiniest cinematic units.

Traditional historical documentaries strive to project a sense of objectivity, producing a top-down view of history that focuses on public events and personalities. In recent decades, in line with historiographical trends advocating “history from below,” a different type of historical documentary has emerged, focusing on tightly circumscribed subjects, personal archives, and first-person perspectives. Efrén Cuevas categorizes these films as “microhistorical documentaries” and examines how they push cinema’s capacity as a producer of historical knowledge in new directions. Cuevas pinpoints the key features of these documentaries, identifying their parallels with written microhistory: a reduced scale of observation, a central role given to human agency, a conjectural approach to the use of archival sources, and a reliance on narrative structures. Microhistorical documentaries also use tools specific to film to underscore the affective dimension of historical narratives, often incorporating autobiographical and essayistic perspectives, and highlighting the role of the protagonists’ personal memories in the reconstruction of the past. These films generally draw from family archives, with an emphasis on snapshots and home movies. Filming History from Below examines works including Péter Forgács’s films dealing with the Holocaust such as The Maelstrom and Free Fall; documentaries about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict; Rithy Panh’s work on the Cambodian genocide; films about the internment of Japanese Americans during the Second World War such as A Family Gathering and History and Memory; and Jonas Mekas’s chronicle of migration in his diary film Lost, Lost, Lost.

"This book explores the weird shapes that emerge when material elements interact with figurative content of the moving image. Employing the digitized first Czech films by Jan Kríženecký prompted the questions: is it possible to do film theory from below, from the perspective of a film object? Could we treat accidents in moving images as full-fledged actors with distinctive aesthetic forms and functions? In these films, analog elements impinge upon the form and content of the moving images to create generative figures and shapes. Using digital technology, we can isolate these features and experiment with how they can be reimagined"--

What is the relationship between cinema and spectator? This is the key question for film theory, and one that Thomas Elsaesser and Malte Hagener put at the center of their insightful and engaging book, now revised from its popular first edition. Every kind of cinema (and every film theory) first imagines an ideal spectator, and then maps certain dynamic interactions between the screen and the spectator’s mind, body and senses. Using seven distinctive configurations of spectator and screen that move progressively from ‘exterior’ to ‘interior’ relationships, the authors retrace the most important stages of film theory from its beginnings to the present—from neo-realist and modernist theories to psychoanalytic, ‘apparatus,’ phenomenological and cognitivist theories, and including recent cross-overs with philosophy and neurology. This new and updated edition of Film Theory: An Introduction through the Senses has been extensively revised and rewritten throughout, incorporating discussion of contemporary films like Her and Gravity, and including a greatly expanded final chapter, which brings film theory fully into the digital age.

Twenty years ago, noted film scholars Tom Gunning and André Gaudreault introduced the phrase “cinema of attractions” to describe the essential qualities of films made in the medium’s earliest days, those produced between 1895 and 1906. Now, The Cinema of Attractions Reloaded critically examines the term and its subsequent wide-ranging use in film studies. The collection opens with a history of the term, tracing the collaboration between Gaudreault and Gunning, the genesis of the term in their attempts to explain the spectacular effects of motion that lay at the heart of early cinema, and the pair’s debts to Sergei Eisenstein and others. This reconstruction is followed by a look at applications of the term to more recent film productions, from the works of the Wachowski brothers to virtual reality and video games. With essays by an impressive collection of international film scholars—and featuring contributions by Gunning and Gaudreault as well—The Cinema of Attractions Reloaded will be necessary reading for all scholars of early film and its continuing influence.

Black women film and video makers have been producing shorts, documentaries and films since the early part of this century. Unfortunately, not only has their work been overlooked by distributors, but critical reviews have been few and far between. Conceived to redress that omission, Black Women Film and Video Artists is the first comprehensive history and analysis of this genre. Gathered here are noted scholars and critics, as well as the film/video makers themselves who offer insight into the work of underexplored artists. The discussions range from pioneering to contemporary film makers and include artists such as Madeline Anderson, Monica Freeman, Jacqueline Shearer, Kathleen Collins, Julie Dash, Camille Billops, Zeinabu irene Davis, and Michelle Parkerson, among others. Contributors include: Jacqueline Bobo, Carmen Coustaut, Gloria J. Gibson, C.A. Griffith, Monique Guillory, Carol Munday Lawrence, O. Funmilayo Makarah, Ntongela Maselila, Jacqueline Shearer, P. Jane Splawn.

The Routledge Encyclopedia of Film Theory is an international reference work representing the essential ideas and concepts at the centre of film theory from the beginning of the twentieth century, to the beginning of the twenty-first. When first encountering film theory, students are often confronted with a dense, interlocking set of texts full of arcane terminology, inexact formulations, sliding definitions, and abstract generalities. The Routledge Encyclopedia of Film Theory challenges these first impressions by aiming to make film theory accessible and open to new readers. Edward Branigan and Warren Buckland have commissioned over 50 scholars from around the globe to address the difficult formulations and propositions in each theory by reducing these difficult formulations to straightforward propositions. The result is a highly accessible volume that clearly defines, and analyzes step by step, many of the fundamental concepts in film theory, ranging from familiar concepts such as ‘Apparatus’, ‘Gaze’, ‘Genre’, and ‘Identification’, to less well-known and understood, but equally important concepts, such as Alain Badiou’s ‘Inaesthetics’, Gilles Deleuze’s ‘Time-Image’, and Jean-Luc Nancy’s ‘Evidence’. The Routledge Encyclopedia of Film Theory is an ideal reference book for undergraduates of film studies, as well as graduate students new to the discipline.