Film 1900

Klaus Kreimeier is Professor Emeritus of Media Studies at the University of Siegen, Germany. Annemone Ligensa received her M.A. in Theater, Film, and Television Studies from the University of Cologne, Germany, where she also worked as a lecturer in Media Psychology.

"The capable Ligensa and Kreimeier invited a coterie of renowned Continental scholars and thinkers to reflect on issues of modernity and cinema by harking back to the fin de siècle. Such archeological excavations into the cinema of attractions enable one to critique the specific predicament in the 21st century. Using a concept of 'triangulation,' the contributors look at the interrelationships between film, culture, and spectators (i.e., how they construed the emerging film apparatus of early silent film as it both shaped and was itself transformed by culture): for example, the eminent Thomas Elsaesser plays with the trope of the naïve rube spectator who pops up throughout the history of media. Though technical and complex, the essays are not too abstruse for those fascinated with the moments of modernity (e.g., industrialization, urbanization, synchronicity, medical psychology, and so on) and the dynamics of perceptions (even, curiously enough, hypnosis). Particularly noteworthy for its richness is Kreimeier and Tom Gunning's foray into the energetic, thrilling spectacle of truly sensational motion (as in the phantom rides), where heightened consciousness of spatial landscapes challenges perception. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Graduate students, researchers, faculty. — Choice"—T. Lindval, Virginia Wesleyan College, March 2010

• Introduction: Triangulating a Turn: Film 1900 as Technology, Perception and CultureAnnemone Ligensa1. Archaeologies of Interactivity: Early Cinema, Narrative and SpectatorshipThomas Elsaesser2. Viewing Change, Changing Views: The 'History of Vision'-DebateFrank Kessler3. The Ambimodernity of Early Cinema Problems and Paradoxes in the Film-and-Modernity DiscourseBen Singer4. Mind, the Gap: The Discovery of Physiological TimeHenning Schmidgen5. 'Is Everything Relative?': Cinema and the Revolution of Knowledge Around 1900Harro Segeberg6. The Aesthetic Idealist as Efficiency Engineer: Hugo Munsterberg's Theories of Perception, Psychotechnics and CinemaJörg Schweinitz7. Between Observation and Spectatorship: Medicine, Movies and Mass Culture in Imperial GermanyScott Curtis8. The Scene of the Crime: Psychiatric Discourse on the Film Audience in Early Twentieth Century GermanyAndreas Killen9. Seen Through the Eyes of Simmel: The Cinema Programme as a 'Modern' ExperienceAndrea Haller10. 'Under the Sign of the Cinematograph': Urban Mobility and Cinema Location in Wilhelmine BerlinPelle Snickars12. Perceptual Environments for Films: The Development of Cinema in Germany, 1895-1914Joseph Garncarz12. 'Fumbling Towards Some New Form of Art': The Changing Composition of Film Programmes in Britain, 1908-1914Ian Christie and John Sedgwick13. The Attraction of Motion: Modern Representation and the Image of MovementTom Gunning14. 'Dashing Down Upon the Audience': Notes on the Genesis of Filmic PerceptionKlaus Kreimeier15. German Tonbilder of the 1900s: Advanced Technology and National BrandMartin Loiperdinger16. Sculpting with Light: Early Film Style, Stereoscopic Vision and the Idea of a 'Plastic Art In Motion'Michael Wedel17. 'A Cinematograph of Feminine Thought': The Dangerous Age, Cinema and Modern WomenAnnemone Ligensa14. Cinema as a Mode(l) of Perception: Dorothy Richardson's Novels and EssaysNicola GlaubitzBiographies of the Authors