Performing Arts

A transformative decade that witnessed the U.S. film industry's restructuring under the pressures of neoliberal globalization, the 1980s swept away the last remnants of Old and New Hollywood alike while preparing the ground for today's High Concept wasteland – thus goes an all too familiar tale of decline. The texts assembled in this volume tell a different, altogether more fitful and complex story about Reagan-era Hollywood, attuned to the struggles that went on behind and in front of the camera: interrupted careers, defiant last stands, paths not taken.

The book places particular emphasis on modes of realism from within the mainstream of U.S. popular cinema that resisted the tide of the times. The lexicon format, allowing for many perspectives and constellations while imposing none, encourages the reader to make their own connections, drawing out parallel histories that restore a sense of possibility to the canonical course of film history. From forgotten masters to minor works of the greats, from the defining actors of the decade to its definitive genres, from resistant independents to the resistible rise of the multinational corporation: the Real Eighties await rediscovery.

In his films Guy Debord (1931–1994) worked according to the following principle: do nothing you should, do everything you should not. Created between 1952 and 1978, all the films reflect this rule and confirm what he referred to as his “detestable ambition.”

Gathered in a single volume for the first time in German, this publication unites the texts of all of Guy Debord’s films in a new translation: from his first film made in affiliation with the Lettrist group led by Isidore Isou, Hurlements en faveur de Sade (1952), an alteration of black and white sequences devoid of images; to works that originated in the course of his participation in the Situationist International, Sur le passage de quelques personnes à travers une assez courte unité de temps (1959) and Critique de la séparation (1961); to the adaptation of his best known theoretical work, La Société du spectacle (1973), followed by the response to his critics entitled Réfutation de tous les jugements, tant élogieux qu'hostiles, qui ont été jusqu'ici portés sur le film "La Société du spectacle" (1975) and his résumé, intended as an act of closure: In girum imus nocte et consumimur igni (1978).

Texts and images are true to the French original edition and complemented by a list of sources for the quotes, Debord’s notes on his films, drafts of unrealized film projects, as well as the text of the TV documentary he coauthored, Guy Debord, son art et son temps (1994).

From moving images on the Internet to giant IMAX displays: The number of screens in the public and private sphere has increased significantly during the last two decades. While this is often taken to indicate the "death of cinema," this volume attempts to reconsider the limits and specifics of film and the traditional movie theater. It analyzes notions of spectatorship, the relationship between cinema and the "uncinematic," the contested place of installation art in the history of experimental cinema, and the characteristics of the high definition image. Further contributions discuss the ways in which cinema interacts with other arts and media such as theater and television.

Contributors include Raymond Bellour, Victor Burgin, Vinzenz Hediger, Tom Gunning, Ute Holl, Ekkehard Knörer, Thomas Morsch, Jonathan Rosenbaum and the editors.

The unique contribution of Austrian avant-garde film to world cinema is widely acknowledged. This is the first book in English dedicated to its historical and aesthetic evolution. The expansive introductory essay by the editor provides a detailed overview of avant-garde film production in Austria, followed by twenty contributions from international film scholars who engage with the work of individual filmmakers. Beginning with the pioneers of independent filmmaking in post-war Austria, the book covers more than 60 years of subversive motion picture history: from Peter Kubelka's ground-breaking metric films of the 1950s to Kurt Kren's rapid-fire actionist films in the 1960s and subsequent time studies, from Valie Export's feminist cinema to Lisl Ponger's explorations of alternative ethnographies, from the exhilarating found footage works of Martin Arnold and Peter Tscherkassky to the recent generation of younger artists such as Michaela Grill and Siegfried Fruhauf whose innovative work also embraces digital technology.

Contributors include Steve Anker, Steve Bates, Livio Belloï, Christa Blümlinger, Nicole Brenez, Stefan Grissemann, Christoph Huber, Adrian Martin, Maya McKechneay, Maureen Turim, Norbert Pfaffenbichler, Andréa Picard, Barbara Pichler, Bert Rebhandl, Jonathan Rosenbaum, Hans Scheugl, and the editor.

In his 1929 Hollywood production The Case of Lena Smith, director Josef von Sternberg vividly brought to life his youthful memories of the turn of the 20th century through the story a young woman fighting the oppressive class system of Imperial Vienna. Critic Dwight Macdonald called it “the most completely satisfying American film I have seen.” And yet, only a short fragment survives.

Assembling 150 original stills and set designs, numerous script and production documents and essays by eminent film historians, the book reconstructs one of the legendary lost masterpieces of the American cinema. It also includes essays by Janet Bergstrom, Gero Gandert, Franz Grafl, Alexander Horwath, Hiroshi Komatsu and Michael Omasta, a preface by Meri von Sternberg, as well as contemporary reviews and excerpts from Viennese literature of the era.

Austrian director Gerhard Benedikt Friedl (1967–2009) left a small but singular oeuvre. His two films Knittelfeld: A Town Without a History (1997) and Wolff von Amerongen—Did He Commit Bankruptcy Offenses? (2004) are formally rigorous documentary investigations that combine an erratic voice-over commentary with patient observational camera movements. Informed by his studies of philosophy, consciously building on work by James Benning, Straub/Huillet, and others, Friedl invented a unique method of exposing the conjunction of politics, history, and violence in twentieth-century European capitalism. After the critical acclaim of Wolff von Amerongen, the filmmaker embarked on a project investigating the history of the workers’ struggle in the United States, but decided to abandon it after a research trip to the historical locations convinced him of the difficulties in finding any remaining echoes of this historic movement. Traces of the project can be discerned in his final work, Shedding Details (2009), codirected by artist Laura Horelli.

This book sheds light on the work behind Friedl’s films. It combines working process documentation, including photographs, project drafts, and excerpts from his correspondence, with conversations with close collaborators. At the same time, the juxtaposed material traces the path from Friedl’s first short films made at the University of Television and Film Munich (HFF) to several unfinished projects undertaken around the time of his premature death. In addition, it republishes the articles Friedl wrote as a film and art critic and highlights his work as a film teacher and occasional curator.

The volume contains contributions by Gerhard Friedl; conversations with Rudolf Barmettler, Ivette Löcker, Laura Horelli, and others; as well as an introductory essay by editor Volker Pantenburg.

Viennese filmmaker Ruth Beckermann, who has been making films since the 1970s, has created an exciting and widely recognized body of essay and documentary films. Her work is both deeply personal and political. She discusses the complex relationship between history and the present and reflects on her identity as a Jewish woman in postwar Austria and Europe. Tropes of travel and migration feature heavily in her work as means of experiencing the world and of staying alive, literally as well as artistically.

Beckermann’s films speak about identity conflicts and class struggle (Suddenly, a Strike), her family history in the Habsburg monarchy (Paper Bridge), and the war generation as it confronts the crimes of the Wehrmacht (East of War). In 2016, she turned the love affair between poets Paul Celan and Ingeborg Bachmann in postwar Vienna into an unconventional feature film (The Dreamed Ones). In her latest project, The Waldheim Waltz (2018), Beckermann uses 1980s archival footage of the “Waldheim Affair” to reflect on the mechanisms of populism and the media.

This is the first English-language publication on Ruth Beckermann’s filmic oeuvre, including an original essay by Nick Pinkerton, an in-depth conversation with the artist conducted by Alexander Horwath and Michael Omasta, and a detailed filmography by Michael Omasta and Brigitte Mayr.

What are the major issues and challenges that film archives, cinémathèques, and film museums are bound to face in the digital age and at a time when there is an expectation of access on demand? What is curatorship, and what does it imply in the context of film preservation and presentation? Is there a concept of “cinema event" that transcends the idea of film as “content” or “art” in the era of information?

Film Curatorship is an experiment: a collective text, a montage of dialogues, conversations, and exchanges among four professionals representing three generations of film archivists and curators. It calls for an open philosophical and ethical debate on fundamental questions the profession must come to terms with in the twenty-first century.

The first edition of this book was jointly published with Le Giornate del Cinema muto, Pordenone, Italy.

The second edition features a new preface by the authors.

The speculations of popular cinema are never identical to and never independent from political concepts. Serving as indexes to current and historical power relations, mainstream films propose specific ways of living and dying, of lying and speaking the truth, of forming alliances and negotiating conflict – they "make sense." At the same time, they invite us into a realm of the senses where objects and feelings move to a different drumbeat. In film and politics, agency and insight often rear their heads in unexpected places. As Siegfried Kracauer has observed: "Effects can at any time turn into causes."

In his books and articles, Austrian critic and theorist Drehli Robik has investigated this contested terrain for more than three decades. The depth and esprit of his approach place him in a tradition which Jean-Pierre Gorin has called "the way of the termite" – a mode of thinking that finds unconventional paths towards "White Elephants" and supposedly minor subjects alike. This volume collects some of Robnik's most significant scholarly essays, contributions to pop music magazines and film journals, and samples from his work as a philosophical "edutainer." It draws the map of a cultural-political battleground where Colonel Landa and Private Ryan, Monsieur Hulot and Dr. Strangelove, Barbara Loden's loner and Jordan Peele's collective of "Us" all have their reasons.

In summer 1997, French film critic and historian Bernard Eisenschitz met with Robert Kramer three times to speak in detail about Kramer’s life and work, covering thirty years of filmmaking. The exchange between friends starts with his early, activist years and his involvement with the Newsreel Collective, considers essential films like Ice (1969) and Milestones (1975), and traces Kramer’s orientation towards Europe and relocation to France in the late 1970s. Going back and forth between Europe, the USA, Portugal, and Vietnam, Kramer was consistently able to work and make films like Doc’s Kingdom (1987), Route One/USA (1989), and Starting Place (1993). He passed away in 1999.

The conversation was published in French in 2001 as Points de départ. More than 20 years later, Starting Places: A Conversation with Robert Kramer makes this illuminating account of a “mid-Atlantic” filmmaker available in its original language for the first time. The book is complemented by three of Kramer’s essays from the 1980s and 1990s and an updated bibliography and filmography.