Book presentation

To explore film history as a historiography of crises from the perspective of its threshold phenomena and manifestations of transition and to analyze the way in which films aesthetically deal with their historical conditionality, are the two basic approaches in Michael Wedel’s book, Filmgeschichte als Krisengeschichte – Schnitte und Spuren durch den deutschen Film, just published by Transcript-Verlag and that we would like to present at the beginning of the month. With a special interest in historical asynchronicities and aesthetic ruptures, the fourteen chapters of the book offer a history of German cinema seen from its breaks and transitions, specific situations and constellations. On the occasion of the book presentation and in conjunction with the Magical History Tour, which in April is dedicated — following the book — to breaks in film history, we will screen the last film that Fritz Lang directed, DIE 1000 AUGEN DES DR. MABUSE (1960), in which traces of the past are inscribed in an enigmatic way. (April 2)