Cinema of Attractions Reloaded

Wanda Strauven is Privatdozentin at the Goethe University Frankfurt.

"This archive of the evolution of a crucial and influential theoretical concept in film studies is an indispensable dossier of documents tracing the emergence, impact, and varied applications of the notion of the "cinema of attractions."[-]Taken together, these essays, written by some of the most provocative and highly esteemed scholars in film and media studies, reveal the extraordinary historical and theoretical productivity of the notion of "attractions."[-]Ranging from articles associated with the earliest--and widely recognized as brilliant--articulations of the concept by Tom Gunning and Andr� Gaudreault to attempts to flesh out the implications of "attractions" for our understanding of the avant-garde, digital media, VR, and computer games, this anthology is both an intellectual feast and a very precise record of a critical trajectory in recent film studies."[-][-]Mary Ann Doane, Professor of Modern Culture and Media at Brown University

• Introduction to an Attractive Concept, Theory Formation (“The Cinema of Attractions”), Spectacle, Attractions and Visual Pleasure, Attractions: How They Came into the World,32 A Rational Reconstruction of “The Cinema of Attractions, The Cinema of Attractions as Dispositif,58Attraction Theories and Terminologies [“Early Film”] From “Primitive Cinema” to “Kine-Attractography”, From “Primitive Cinema” to “Marvelous” The Attraction of the Intelligent Eye: Obsessions with the Vision Machine in Early Film Theories, Rhythmic Bodies/Movies: Dance as Attraction in Early Film Culture, Audiences and Attractions [Its Spectator], A Cinema of Contemplation, A Cinema of Discernment: Spectatorship, Intertextuality and Attractions in the 1890s, The Lecturer and the Attraction, Integrated Attractions: Style and Spectatorship in Transitional Cinema, Discipline through Diegesis: The Rube Film between “Attractions” and Narrative Integration, Attraction Practices through History [“The Avant-Garde”: section 1], Circularity and Repetition at the Heart of the Attraction: Optical Toys and the Emergence of a New Cultural Series, Lumière, the Train and the Avant-Garde, Programming Attractions: Avant-Garde Exhibition Practice in the 1920s and 1930s, The Associational Attractions of the Musical, Digital Media and (Un)Tamed Attractions [The Avant-Garde: section 2], Chez le Photographe c’est chez moi: Relationship of Actor and Filmed Subject to Camera in Early Film and Virtual Reality Spaces, The Hollywood Cobweb: New Laws of Attraction, Figures of Sensation: Between Still and Moving Images, “Cutting to the Quick”: Techne, Physis, and Poiesis and the Attractions of Slow Motion, Dossier, Pie and Chase: Gag, Spectacle and Narrative in Slapstick Comedy, Early Cinema as a Challenge to Film History, The Cinema of Attraction[s]: Early Film, Its Spectator and the Avant-Garde, Rethinking Early Cinema: Cinema of Attractions and Narrativity, Notes on Contributors, General Bibliography, Index of Names, Index of Film Titles, Index of Subjects.