Thomas Elsaesser was a German film historian and professor of Film and Television Studies at the University of Amsterdam. His work focused on understanding post-war and contemporary cinema. Elsaesser primarily explored the intricate relationship between film and culture, investigating how cinema reflects broader societal and historical contexts. He also delved into the influence of modernity on the art of filmmaking.
"Weimar Cinema and After" offers a fresh analysis of 1920s German cinema, highlighting its role in shaping a national image amid political turmoil. Thomas Elsaesser critiques traditional views linking genres to romanticism, emphasizing cinema's impact on collective memory over national identity, and its relevance to contemporary identity challenges.
"The Persistence of Hollywood" compiles Thomas Elsaesser's influential writings on Hollywood, exploring its evolution over nearly a century. The book covers key directors, shifts from classic to corporate Hollywood, and various critical-theoretical frameworks, including auteurism, genre, and ideology, reshaping film studies along the way.
Focusing on the influential German cinema of the 1920s, the book explores how iconic films like The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari and Nosferatu reflect a nation grappling with its identity post-World War I. It examines the works of renowned directors such as Fritz Lang and F.W. Murnau, highlighting their commentary on fascism and national trauma. Elsaesser challenges traditional interpretations of genres like "Nazi Cinema" and "film noir," proposing innovative frameworks for understanding these movements as significant contributions to global visual culture.
The exploration of the Holocaust's impact on postwar German cinema reveals a complex interplay of trauma and cultural memory. Thomas Elsaesser examines how Germany's efforts to confront its past represent both failures and successes, contributing to a broader European context of 'guilt management.' Through case studies of notable filmmakers like Fassbinder and Farocki, he illustrates the varied representations of the Holocaust in German films from the 1950s to the present, highlighting its pervasive influence even when not explicitly depicted.
What is the relationship between the cinema and the spectator? Renowned film scholars Thomas Elsaesser and Malte Hagener use this central question for film theory in order to guide students through all of the major film theories-from the classical period to today-in this brief, insightful, and engaging book. Every kind of cinema (and every kind of film theory) presupposes an ideal spectator, and then imagines a certain relationship between the mind and body of that spectator and the screen. Using seven distinctive configurations of spectator and screen that move from "exterior" to "interior" relationships, the authors retrace the most important stages of film theory from the 1920s onwards, with special attention paid to theories since 1945, from neo-realist and modernist theories to psychoanalytic, apparatus, phenomenological, and cognitivist theories, while also offering an incisive extension of film theory through the senses into the digital age. Each chapter opens with a paradigmatic scene from a well-known film to introduce key concepts, and outlines the major schools of thought and theorists attached to a particular film theory. The films discussed combine classics of cinema such as Rear Window and The Searchers with contemporary films including Donnie Darko and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. Film stills throughout provide a visual key to unlock challenging theoretical concepts.
This volume explores the cultural phenomenon of Metropolis , its different versions, its changing meanings, and its role as a database of the twentieth century.
This book focuses on nonlinear terahertz spectroscopy of condensed matter and introduces basic concepts, technologies, and methods for an interdisciplinary research audience. Recent applications in basic science illustrate the potential and relevance of the field.
Exploring the intersection of contemporary cinema and Enlightenment values, this volume examines how film engages with political and philosophical discourse in the context of globalization and multiculturalism. It delves into ethical and political boundaries, addressing the implications of post-secular and post-Enlightenment thought. Through its analysis, the book seeks to understand cinema's role in shaping ideas about democracy and the future of European values amidst evolving societal challenges.
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.
Our concern with the space of experience in cinema is symptomatic of the changes cinema has undergone in the past thirty years. In film studies it points to a bifurcation of interest: For much of the 1950s and 60s, the focus has been on the makers – the directors as auteurs and artists; but since the 1970s more emphasis has been laid on audiences, reception and the physical spaces of cinema experience. But even within this shift to audiences, there are differences of emphasis: between “film” and “cinema”, between “ocular vision” and “embodied vision”, between “sight” in the cinema and its “sound-scape and sound spaces”, between the “visible” and the “invisible”, or as I would summarize this in-between-ness of cinema: between film as “text and narrative” and cinema as “event and experience”.