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Der kleine Film legt keine Ontologie des Mediums nahe, sondern eine Möglichkeit das Kleine als historiografische und filmtheoretische Größe zu thematisieren. Das Buch befasst sich mit drei Sammlungen von Amateuraufnahmen aus der Zeit des Nationalsozialismus und konfrontiert sie mit Siegfried Kracauers Geschichte - Vor den letzten Dingen - mehrere verschollene Gegenstände, die zu der Frage führen, wie sich das Kleine im historiografischen Prozess zum Großen positionieren lässt. Kracauers methodisches Grundproblem des Maßstabs wird in Varianten durchgespielt: vom Einzelding zur Geschichte, vom Gelegenheitsbild zum Filmmotiv, vom Aufsatz zur Filmtheorie und zuletzt vom kleinen Film zur kulturgeschichtlichen Mikrologie. Dabei geht es nicht um Kleinigkeitskrämerei, sondern um das, was bleibt, wenn die großen Schauplätze der Filmgeschichte in den Hintergrund treten.

Nationalsozialismus --- Siegfried Kracauer --- Filmtheorie --- Filmgeschichte --- amateur photographs --- Mikrohistorie --- Germany.

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Where is film analysis at today? What is cinema theory up to, behind our backs? The field, as professionally defined (at least in the Anglo-American academic world), is presently divided between contextual historians who turn to broad formations of modernity, and stylistic connoisseurs who call for a return to old-fashioned things like authorial vision, tone, and mise en scene. But there are other, vital, inventive currents happening -- in criticism, on the Internet, in small magazines, and renegade conferences everywhere -- which we are not hearing much about in any official way. Last Day Every Day shines a light on one of these exciting new avenues. Is there a way to bring together, in a refreshed manner, textual logic, hermeneutic interpretation, theoretical speculation, and socio-political history? A way to break the deadlock between classical approaches that sought organic coherence in film works, and poststructuralist approaches that exposed the heterogeneity of all texts and scattered the pieces to the four winds? A way to attend to the minute materiality of cinema, while grasping and contesting the histories imbricated in every image and sound? In "A Philosophical Interpretation of Freud," Paul Ricoeur (drawing upon Hegel) remarks: "The appropriation of a meaning constituted prior to me presupposes the movement of a subject drawn ahead of itself by a succession of 'figures,' each of which finds its meaning in the ones which follow it." The notion of the figural has recently become popular in European film theory and analysis, especially due to the work of Nicole Brenez -- in which the figure stands for "the force . . . of everything that remains to be constituted" in a character, object, social relation or idea. Her use of the term refers back to magisterial work of German literary philologist Erich Auerbach (Mimesis), who decoded the religious interpretive system wherein all persons and events are grasped as significant only insofar as they prefigure their fulfilment on the 'last day' of divine judgment. Auerbach's 1920s work on figuration in Dante was an important influence on his friend Walter Benjamin; and it was this 'theological' aspect of Benjamin's thought that caught Kracauer's attention, leading to the problematic of the redemption of worldly things. Last Day Every Day traces the notion of figural thinking from Weimar then to Paris (and beyond) today, taking in contemporary writings by William Routt and Giorgio Agamben, as well as two filmmakers also touched by such thinking and its cultural ambience: Josef von Sternberg (The Blue Angel) and Douglas Sirk (The Tarnished Angels). Figural analysis has a resonance for its practitioners today that goes far beyond its theological roots and undertones. It has become a way to trace and write cultural history, sensitive to the smallest but most powerful vibrations, exchanges, and metamorphoses within texts, whether filmic, literary, pictorial, aural, or theatrical. Modern cinema, in particular, often reverberates with the apocalyptic thunder of the last day (think Lars von Trier's Melancholia or Abel Ferrara's 4:44 Last Day on Earth) -- while also opening us to the miracles and mysteries, the perplexities and potentialities, of every day.

Motion pictures --- Film criticism. --- film studies --- Eric Auerbach --- Siegfried Kracauer --- Nicole Brenez --- Douglas Sirk --- Philosophy. --- film studies --- Eric Auerbach --- Siegfried Kracauer --- Nicole Brenez --- Douglas Sirk

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Where is film analysis at today? What is cinema theory up to, behind our backs? The field, as professionally defined (at least in the Anglo-American academic world), is presently divided between contextual historians who turn to broad formations of modernity, and stylistic connoisseurs who call for a return to old-fashioned things like authorial vision, tone, and mise en scene. But there are other, vital, inventive currents happening -- in criticism, on the Internet, in small magazines, and renegade conferences everywhere -- which we are not hearing much about in any official way. Last Day Every Day shines a light on one of these exciting new avenues. Is there a way to bring together, in a refreshed manner, textual logic, hermeneutic interpretation, theoretical speculation, and socio-political history? A way to break the deadlock between classical approaches that sought organic coherence in film works, and poststructuralist approaches that exposed the heterogeneity of all texts and scattered the pieces to the four winds? A way to attend to the minute materiality of cinema, while grasping and contesting the histories imbricated in every image and sound? In "A Philosophical Interpretation of Freud," Paul Ricoeur (drawing upon Hegel) remarks: "The appropriation of a meaning constituted prior to me presupposes the movement of a subject drawn ahead of itself by a succession of 'figures,' each of which finds its meaning in the ones which follow it." The notion of the figural has recently become popular in European film theory and analysis, especially due to the work of Nicole Brenez -- in which the figure stands for "the force . . . of everything that remains to be constituted" in a character, object, social relation or idea. Her use of the term refers back to magisterial work of German literary philologist Erich Auerbach (Mimesis), who decoded the religious interpretive system wherein all persons and events are grasped as significant only insofar as they prefigure their fulfilment on the 'last day' of divine judgment. Auerbach's 1920s work on figuration in Dante was an important influence on his friend Walter Benjamin; and it was this 'theological' aspect of Benjamin's thought that caught Kracauer's attention, leading to the problematic of the redemption of worldly things. Last Day Every Day traces the notion of figural thinking from Weimar then to Paris (and beyond) today, taking in contemporary writings by William Routt and Giorgio Agamben, as well as two filmmakers also touched by such thinking and its cultural ambience: Josef von Sternberg (The Blue Angel) and Douglas Sirk (The Tarnished Angels). Figural analysis has a resonance for its practitioners today that goes far beyond its theological roots and undertones. It has become a way to trace and write cultural history, sensitive to the smallest but most powerful vibrations, exchanges, and metamorphoses within texts, whether filmic, literary, pictorial, aural, or theatrical. Modern cinema, in particular, often reverberates with the apocalyptic thunder of the last day (think Lars von Trier's Melancholia or Abel Ferrara's 4:44 Last Day on Earth) -- while also opening us to the miracles and mysteries, the perplexities and potentialities, of every day.

Motion pictures --- Film criticism. --- Philosophy. --- film studies --- Eric Auerbach --- Siegfried Kracauer --- Nicole Brenez --- Douglas Sirk

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Onde se encontra a análise fílmica hoje? O que e que a teoria de cinema anda a desenvolver na obscuridade? Este campo, tal como foi definido profissionalmente (pelo menos no mundo academico anglo-saxónico), encontra-se actualmente dividido entre historiadores interessados no contexto das grandes formações da modernidade e connoisseurs que reclamam o regresso estilístico de coisas antiquadas como a visão autoral, o tom ou a mise-en-scene. Mas há tambem outras correntes, vitais e inventivas -- na crítica, na internet, em pequenas revistas, em conferências renegadas um pouco por todo o lado --, que não estamos a conseguir escutar em nenhum dos canais oficiais. Último Dia Todos os Dias, de Adrian Martin -- nesta edição acompanhado do ensaio "Avatares do Encontro" --, lança uma luz sobre estas novas e excitantes avenidas.Publicado originalmente como Last Day Every Day: Figural Thinking from Auerbach and Kracauer to Agamben and Brenez, em 2012, por Dead Letter Office, uma serie da editora punctum books. Esta edição foi produzida conjuntamente por Centro de Estudos Comparatistas | Faculdade de Letras da Universidade de Lisboa e punctum books, 2015.

Motion pictures --- Film criticism. --- Philosophy. --- film studies --- Eric Auerbach --- Siegfried Kracauer --- Nicole Brenez --- Douglas Sirk

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Onde se encontra a análise fílmica hoje? O que e que a teoria de cinema anda a desenvolver na obscuridade? Este campo, tal como foi definido profissionalmente (pelo menos no mundo academico anglo-saxónico), encontra-se actualmente dividido entre historiadores interessados no contexto das grandes formações da modernidade e connoisseurs que reclamam o regresso estilístico de coisas antiquadas como a visão autoral, o tom ou a mise-en-scene. Mas há tambem outras correntes, vitais e inventivas -- na crítica, na internet, em pequenas revistas, em conferências renegadas um pouco por todo o lado --, que não estamos a conseguir escutar em nenhum dos canais oficiais. Último Dia Todos os Dias, de Adrian Martin -- nesta edição acompanhado do ensaio "Avatares do Encontro" --, lança uma luz sobre estas novas e excitantes avenidas.Publicado originalmente como Last Day Every Day: Figural Thinking from Auerbach and Kracauer to Agamben and Brenez, em 2012, por Dead Letter Office, uma serie da editora punctum books. Esta edição foi produzida conjuntamente por Centro de Estudos Comparatistas | Faculdade de Letras da Universidade de Lisboa e punctum books, 2015.

Motion pictures --- Film criticism. --- Philosophy. --- film studies --- Eric Auerbach --- Siegfried Kracauer --- Nicole Brenez --- Douglas Sirk