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Alexander Kluge is best known as a founding member of the New German Cinema. His work, however, spans a diverse range of fields and, over the last fifty years, he has been active as a filmmaker, writer and television producer. This book - the first of its kind in English - comprises a wide selection of texts, including articles and stories by Kluge, television transcripts, critical essays by renowned international scholars, and interviews with Kluge himself. It will be a valuable resource for students and scholars in the fields of film, television, and literary studies, as well as those interested in exploring the intersections between art, politics, and social change.
For more than a half century now, Alexander Kluge has enjoyed respect as a seemingly boundless source of creative volition, social critique, and utopian initiative. In his versatile writings, idiosyncratic films, and innovative television programs, German history provides a continuing point of departure. Complex and conflicted, this history, maintains Kluge, does not readily lend itself to transparent presentation or easy understanding. The essays in this valuable new collection provide a comprehensive guide through the diverse endeavors of this exemplary public intellectual. Eric Rentschler, Arthur Kingsley Porter Professor of Germanic Languages and Literatures, Harvard University - The important, provocative, multi-faceted and deeply fascinating oeuvre of the polymath Alexander Kluge, has remained -astonishingly-- all-too little known in the English-speaking world, and this despite the more extensive reception of his theoretical writings. Now, thanks to this rich and wide-ranging collection of critical appraisals by leading media theorists and translations of selected primary texts, Kluge's prolific contributions to the domains of cinema, opera, and television -finally accessible in a vast and definitive DVD edition- have been accorded a nuanced analytic context that should help foster a long-overdue English-language reception. Thomas Y. Levin, associate professor of German, Princeton University - [...] the most thorough collation of writings concerning Kluge yet to appear in English, whose merits centre on its judicious selection and arrangement of texts, which are not only of reliably high quality, but also interact with and bounce off each other in stimulating, inventive ways. The reader seeking to navigate the vast oceans of Kluge's bountiful work will find Raw Materials for the Imagination to be an indispensable compass. Senses of Cinema, Issue 66, March 2013
| Introduction | |
| Editor's Introduction | p. 13 |
| The Stubborn Persistence of Alexander Kluge | p. 22 |
| Film, Politics and the Public Sphere | |
| On Film and the Public Sphere | p. 33 |
| Cooperative Auteur Cinema and Oppositional Public Sphere: Alexander Kluge's Contribution to Germany In Autumn | p. 50 |
| 'What is Different is Good': Women and Femininity in the Films of Alexander Kluge | p. 72 |
| Rethinking History | |
| In Search of Germany: Alexander Kluge's The Patriot | p. 95 |
| Alexander Kluge and German History: 'The Air Raid on Halberstadt on 8.4.1945' | p. 127 |
| The Air Raid on Halberstadt, 8 April 1945 (extract) | p. 155 |
| Realism as Protest | |
| Construction Site Film: Kluge's Idea of Realism and His Short Films | p. 173 |
| The Sharpest Ideology: That Reality Appeals to its Realistic Character | p. 191 |
| Debate on the Documentary Film: Conversation with Klaus Eder, 1980 | p. 197 |
| Opera as a 'Power Plant of Emotion' | |
| Undoing Act 5: History, Bodies and Operatic Remains in The Power of Emotion | p. 211 |
| 'Feelings Can Move Mountains ...': An Interview with Alexander Kluge on the Film The Power of Feelings | p. 241 |
| Alexander Kluge's Phantom of the Opera | p. 247 |
| Storytelling and Politics | |
| An Analytic Storyteller in the Course of Time | p. 271 |
| The Political as Intensity of Everyday Feelings | p. 283 |
| At the 2003 International Security Conference | p. 291 |
| Television and Counter-Public Spheres | |
| Raw Materials for the Imagination: Kluge's Work for Television | p. 305 |
| Television and Obstinacy | p. 318 |
| Reframing Islam in Television: Alexander Kluge's Interviews on Islam and Terrorism since 9/11 | p. 331 |
| In the Real Time of Feelings: Interview with Alexander Kluge | p. 352 |
| Television Interviews | |
| Character Armour and Mobile Warfare | p. 365 |
| Jeff Mills: Godfather of Techno | p. 369 |
| Tsunami of Emotion: On Puccini's Tosca | p. 378 |
| Early Cinema/Recent Work | |
| Reinventing the Nickelodeon: Notes on Kluge and Early Cinema | p. 389 |
| 'All Things Are Enchanted Human Beings': Remarks on Alexander Kluge's News from Ideological Antiquity | p. 409 |
| Selected Bibliography of English-Language Texts | p. 417 |
| Acknowledgments | p. 422 |
| Notes on Contributors | p. 425 |
| Index | p. 430 |
| Table of Contents provided by Ingram. All Rights Reserved. |
ISBN: 9789089642738
ISBN-10: 9089642730
Series: Film Culture in Transition
Audience:
Tertiary; University or College
Format:
Hardcover
Language:
English
Number Of Pages: 440
Published: 15th March 2012
Publisher: Amsterdam University Press
Dimensions (cm): 23.4 x 15.6
x 2.8
Weight (kg): 0.881
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