Nicolas Helm-Grovas is Postdoctoral Fellow at Institute for Cultural Inquiry (ICI), Berlin. His writing has appeared in publications such as Oxford Art Journal, Radical Philosophy, Trafic: Almanach de cinéma, New Left Review: Sidecar, and in various edited collections.

• Acknowledgments List of Figures Introduction 1 Film Theory, Theorist-Filmmakers, Theory Films 2 (Objective) Alliance 3 From Notes and Manifestos to Afterthoughts and RetrospectsPart 1 Elements of Counter-Cinema1 Models 1 Post-’68 Contexts 2 The Soviet Model 3 Women’s Work: Past and Present 4 Counter-Cinema as Counter-Form 2 Metalanguage, Theory Film, Scorched Earth 1 Semiotics and Realism, or Eisenstein contra Metz 2 Semiotics of the Avant-Garde 3 Feminism/Psychoanalysis 4 Scorched Earth, or Film as Ideology Critique: Penthesilea, Queen of the AmazonsPart 2 The Autonomous Space of Counter-Cinema3 For an Avant-Garde Break 1 Counter-Cinema as Counter-Institution 2 The Destruction of Pleasure and the Pleasure of Destruction 3 A Materialist Theory of Cinema and Materialist Cinema of Theory 4 Counter-Cinema as Feminist Cinema 1 Feminism and Melodrama 2 Feminism and the Avant-Garde 3 Social Reproduction, Psychoanalysis and the Politics of the Unconscious: Riddles of the SphinxPart 3 Leaving Counter-Cinema5 From Complex Seeing to Afterthoughts and Retrospects 1 The Nightmare of Independent Film 2 Factography, Interpellation and the Biography of the Subject: AMY! 3 Once More on Semiotics, Realism and the Avant-Garde 4 Reconsidering Godard, Reconsidering Visual Pleasure 5 An End of an Era Movie: Crystal Gazing Conclusion: On the Passage of a Few People through a Rather Brief Moment in Time Bibliography Index