Metropolis is a monumental work. On its release in 1925, after sixteen months'filming, it was Germany's most expensive feature film, a canvas for directorFritz Lang's increasingly extravagant ambitions. Lang, inspired by the skyline ofNew York, created a whole new vision of cities. One of the greatest works ofscience fiction, the film also tells human stories about love and family.Thomas Elsaesser explores the cultural phenomenon of Metropolis: its differ...

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 int...

In German Cinema – Terror and Trauma Since 1945, Thomas Elsaesser reevaluates the meaning of the Holocaust for postwar German films and culture, while offering a reconsideration of trauma theory today. Elsaesser argues that Germany's attempts at "mastering the past" can be seen as both a failure and an achievement, making it appropriate to speak of an ongoing 'guilt management' that includes not only Germany, but Europe as a whole. In a series of case studies, which consider the w...

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...

German cinema of the 1920s is still regarded as one of the 'golden ages' of world cinema. Films such as The Cabinet of Dr Caligari, Dr Mabuse the Gambler, Nosferatu, Metropolis, Pandora's Box and The Blue Angel have long been canonised as classics, but they are also among the key films defining an image of Germany as a nation uneasy with itself. The work of directors like Fritz Lang, F.W. Murnau and G.W. Pabst, which having apparently announced the horrors of fascism, whi...

Winner of the Limina Award 2021This groundbreaking volume for the Thinking Cinema series focuses on the extent to which contemporary cinema contributes to political and philosophical thinking about the future of Europe's core Enlightenment values. In light of the challenges of globalization, multi-cultural communities and post-nation state democracy, the book interrogates the borders of ethics and politics and roots itself in debates about post-secular, po...

This book represents the culmination of Thomas Elsaesser’s intense and passionate thinking about the Hollywood mind-game film from the previous two decades.In order to answer what the mind-game film is, why they exist, and how they function, Elsaesser maps the industrial-institutional challenges and constraints facing Hollywood, and the broader philosophic horizon within which American cinema thrives today. He demonstrates how the ‘Persistence of Hollywood’ continues as it has adap...

While Hollywood’s success – its persistence – has remained constant for almost one hundred years, the study of its success has undergone significant expansion and transformation. Since the 1960s, Thomas Elsaesser’s research has spearheaded the study of Hollywood, beginning with his classic essays on auteurism and cinephilia, focused around a director’s themes and style, up to his analysis of the "corporate authorship" of contemporary director James Cameron. In between, he has helped to tra...

Compilação de diferentes artigos publicados pelo autor Thomas Elsaesser em torno de seu estudo "The New Film History as Media Archaeology". Esse e os outros ensaios dedicados ao tema avaliam o impacto das tecnologias digitais no entendimento da história do cinema, discutem as mudanças nas tecnologias de mídia como um desafio a ela e reconhecem a onipresença da imagem em movimento no ambiente urbano. Elsaesser entende que os efeitos do cinema, os elementos-chave criados em sua trajetória e ...

Qual é a relação entre cinema e espectador? Essa é a questão fundamental para a teoria do cinema, que Thomas Elsaesser e Malte Hagener colocam no centro desse livro esclarecedor e envolvente.Todo tipo de cinema (e toda teoria do cinema) primeiro imagina um espectador ideal e, então, mapeia determinadas interações dinâmicas entre a tela e a mente, o corpo e os sentidos do espectador. Usando sete configurações distintas de espectador e tela, que passam progressivamente de relações "ex...

Die Filmtheorien, die seit der Entstehung des Kinos am Ende des 19. Jahrhunderts entwickelt wurden, lassen sich als eine Reihe von Metaphern, Konzepten und Begriffsfeldern verstehen, die sich auf den Körper des Zuschauers und dessen taktile, epistemologische, sensomotorische und perzeptuelle Oberflächen und Wahrnehmungsarten beziehen. Für die klassische Filmtheorie (etwa seit 1945) lassen sich sieben Entwicklungsstufen ausmachen, die in dieser Einführung entfaltet werden und denen die jewe...

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 ...