Here's a new book I've just become aware of.... and it looks good! No, it looks great! The book is
The Promise of Cinema: German Film Theory, 1907-1933 by Anton Kaes (Editor), Nicholas Baer (Editor), and Michael Cowan (Editor). It is published by the University of California Press.
I was turned on to the book by
Jan-Christopher Horak, who teaches at UCLA and contributes to the UCLA Film and Television Archive blog. Check it out HERE.
Notably, the book includes pieces by G.W. Pabst, including his 1929 essay "Reality of Sound Film." That was the year he made both
Pandora's Box and
Diary of a Lost Girl with Louise Brooks. There are also pieces by Fritz Lang, Billy Wilder, Ernst Lubitsch, Emil Jannings, Lotte Eisner, Bertolt Brecht, and Kurt Weill. Siegfried Kracauer contributes pieces on Greta Garbo and Charlie Chaplin.
From the publisher: "Rich in implications for our present era of media change,
The Promise of Cinema
offers a compelling new vision of film theory. The volume conceives of
“theory” not as a fixed body of canonical texts, but as a dynamic set of
reflections on the very idea of cinema and the possibilities once
associated with it. Unearthing more than 275 early-twentieth-century
German texts, this ground-breaking documentation leads readers into a
world that was striving to assimilate modernity’s most powerful new
medium. We encounter lesser-known essays by Béla Balázs, Walter
Benjamin, and Siegfried Kracauer alongside interventions from the realms
of aesthetics, education, industry, politics, science, and technology.
The book also features programmatic writings from the Weimar avant-garde
and from directors such as Fritz Lang and F.W. Murnau. Nearly all
documents appear in English for the first time; each is meticulously
introduced and annotated. The most comprehensive collection of German
writings on film published to date,
The Promise of Cinema is an essential resource for students and scholars of film and media, critical theory, and European culture and history."
BUT WAIT! THERE'S MORE!! The editors have also set up an extensive website related to the book which is a must visit. Check it out at http://www.thepromiseofcinema.com/
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REVIEWS:
“This extraordinary book expands all horizons of cinema. Its utopian
vision inspires us to imagine a film art for the twenty-first
century.”—Alexander Kluge, filmmaker and author of
Cinema Stories
“A treasure trove of insights and ideas, this book uncovers the
excitement cinema generated as the art form of modernity. Film studies
may take years to digest the richness this volume contains—and I believe
it will never be quite the same afterward.” —Tom Gunning, author of
The Films of Fritz Lang: Allegories of Vision and Modernity
“Opening entirely new pathways to the research and teaching of German
film culture, this carefully edited sourcebook reveals the fantastic
wealth of early ideas and thoughts on cinema.”—Gertrud Koch, author of
Siegfried Kracauer: An Introduction
“On page after page, a vibrant debate, previously lost in archives,
comes to life again. This book changes our idea of what cinema was and
is.”—Francesco Casetti, author of
Eye of the Century: Film, Experience, Modernity
“An indispensable and revelatory resource for all who are exploring the
political and aesthetic genealogy of the media culture we inhabit
today.”—Jonathan Crary, author of
Suspensions of Perception: Attention, Spectacle, and Modern Culture
"This remarkable collection appearing at this historical moment invites
us to think about cinema before its first German theorists knew what it
might become, just as we wonder what the cinema will become today as it
transforms itself all over again." —Jane M. Gaines, author of
Contested Culture: The Image, the Voice, and the Law
"Any form of memory worthy of the term ought to address the future even
more than the past. The great strength of this collection lies in its
ability to make one century speak to another, thereby evoking the future
of film today."— Raymond Bellour, author of
Between-the-Images
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ABOUT THE AUTHORS:
Anton Kaes is Professor of German and Film & Media at the
University of California, Berkeley. He has written and edited numerous
books, including
Shell Shock Cinema and
The Weimar Republic Sourcebook, and is coeditor of the Weimar and Now series.
Nicholas Baer is
Visiting Assistant Professor of Cinema Studies and Philosophy at
Purchase College, State University of New York. He has published many
essays on German cinema, film theory, and the philosophy of history.
Michael Cowan
is Reader in Film Studies at the University of St. Andrews. He is the
author of numerous books and collections including, most recently,
Walter Ruttmann and the Cinema of Multiplicity: Avant-garde - Advertising - Modernity.