Walter Ruttmann and the Cinema of Multiplicity

Avant-Garde Film - Advertising - Modernity
0. Auflage 2015
ISBN: 978-90-8964-584-5
Verlag: Amsterdam University Press

Buch, Englisch, 260 Seiten, Format (B × H): 157 mm x 233 mm, Gewicht: 434 g

Reihe: Film Culture in Transition

A key figure in early avant-garde cinema, Walter Ruttmann was a pioneer of experimental animation and the creative force behind one of the silent era's most celebrated montage films, Berlin: Symphony of a Great City. Yet even as he was making experimental films, Ruttmann had a day job. He worked regularly in advertising -and he would go on to make industrial films, medical films, and even Nazi propaganda films.

Michael Cowan offers here the first study of Ruttmann in English, not only shedding light on his commercial, industrial, and propaganda work, but also rethinking his significance in light of recent transformations in film studies. Cowan brilliantly teases out the linkages between the avant-garde and industrial society in the early twentieth century, showing how Ruttmann's films incorporated and enacted strategies for managing the multiplicities of mass society.

This book has won the Willy Haas Award 2014 for its outstanding contribution to the study of German cinema.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Cowan, Michael

Fachgebiete

• Geisteswissenschaften Theater- und Filmwissenschaft | Andere Darstellende Künste Filmwissenschaft, Fernsehen, Radio Filmtheorie, Filmanalyse
• Interdisziplinäres Wissenschaften Wissenschaft und Gesellschaft | Kulturwissenschaften Kulturwissenschaften

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Introduction: Avant-Garde, Advertising and the Managing of Multiplicity 1. Absolute Advertising: Abstraction and Figuration in Ruttmann’s Animated Product Advertisements (1922-1927) 2. The Cross-Section: Images of theWorld and Contingency Management in Ruttmann’s Montage Films of the Late 1920s (1927-1929) 3. Statistics and Biopolitics: Conceiving the National Body in Ruttmann’s Hygiene Films (1930-1933) 4. ŸÜberall StahlŒ: Forming the New Nation in Ruttmann’s Steel and Armament Films (1934-1940) Afterword: Of Good and Bad Objects Notes Bibliography Filmograph Index of Names Index of Film Titles Index of Subjects

Über Autor(innen)

Cowan, Michael
Michael Cowan is Professor of film and media history in the Department of Cinematic Arts at the University of Iowa. His research, focused on German and European cinema, examines the broader cultural and technological contexts in which film practices emerged and evolved in the early 20th century. His publications have won numerous awards from the Society of Film and Media Studies and the British Association of Film and Television Studies Scholars, as well as the Willy Haas Award (Germany) and the Limina Award (Italy).

"http://www.st-andrews.ac.uk/filmstudies/staff_profiles/dr-michael-cowan-beginning-spring-2015/" target="_blank">Michael Cowan is Reader in Film Studies at St Andrews University.