Sarah Keller - Böcker

Maya Deren (1917-1961) was a Russian-born American filmmaker, theorist, poet, and photographer working at the forefront of the American avant-garde in the 1940s and 1950s. Influenced by Jean Cocteau and Marcel Duchamp, she is best known for her seminal film Meshes of the Afternoon (1943), a dream-like experiment with time and symbol, looped narrative and provocative imagery, setting the stage for the twentieth-century's groundbreaking aesthetic movements and films. Maya Deren assesses both the filmmaker's completed work and her numerous unfinished projects, arguing Deren's overarching aesthetic is founded on principles of incompletion, contingency, and openness. Combining the contrasting approaches of documentary, experimental, and creative film, Deren created a wholly original experience for film audiences that disrupted the subjectivity of cinema, its standards of continuity, and its dubious facility with promoting categories of realism. This critical retrospective reflects on the development of Deren's career and the productive tensions she initiated that continue to energize film.

Maya Deren (1917-1961) was a Russian-born American filmmaker, theorist, poet, and photographer working at the forefront of the American avant-garde in the 1940s and 1950s. Influenced by Jean Cocteau and Marcel Duchamp, she is best known for her seminal film Meshes of the Afternoon (1943), a dream-like experiment with time and symbol, looped narrative and provocative imagery, setting the stage for the twentieth-century's groundbreaking aesthetic movements and films. Maya Deren assesses both the filmmaker's completed work and her numerous unfinished projects, arguing Deren's overarching aesthetic is founded on principles of incompletion, contingency, and openness. Combining the contrasting approaches of documentary, experimental, and creative film, Deren created a wholly original experience for film audiences that disrupted the subjectivity of cinema, its standards of continuity, and its dubious facility with promoting categories of realism. This critical retrospective reflects on the development of Deren's career and the productive tensions she initiated that continue to energize film.

The advent of new screening practices and viewing habits in the twenty-first century has spurred a public debate over what it means to be a “cinephile.” In Anxious Cinephilia, Sarah Keller places these competing visions in historical and theoretical perspective, tracing how the love of movies intertwines with anxieties over the content and impermanence of cinematic images.Keller reframes the history of cinephilia from the earliest days of film through the French New Wave and into the streaming era, arguing that love and fear have shaped the cinematic experience from its earliest days. This anxious love for the cinema marks both institutional practices and personal experiences, from the curation of the moviegoing experience to the creation of community and identity through film festivals to posting on social media. Through a detailed analysis of films and film history, Keller examines how changes in cinema practice and spectatorship create anxiety even as they inspire nostalgia. Anxious Cinephilia offers a new theoretical approach to the relationship between spectator and cinema and reimagines the concept of cinephilia to embrace its diverse forms and its uncertain future.

The advent of new screening practices and viewing habits in the twenty-first century has spurred a public debate over what it means to be a “cinephile.” In Anxious Cinephilia, Sarah Keller places these competing visions in historical and theoretical perspective, tracing how the love of movies intertwines with anxieties over the content and impermanence of cinematic images.Keller reframes the history of cinephilia from the earliest days of film through the French New Wave and into the streaming era, arguing that love and fear have shaped the cinematic experience from its earliest days. This anxious love for the cinema marks both institutional practices and personal experiences, from the curation of the moviegoing experience to the creation of community and identity through film festivals to posting on social media. Through a detailed analysis of films and film history, Keller examines how changes in cinema practice and spectatorship create anxiety even as they inspire nostalgia. Anxious Cinephilia offers a new theoretical approach to the relationship between spectator and cinema and reimagines the concept of cinephilia to embrace its diverse forms and its uncertain future.

Barbara Hammer: Pushing Out of the Frame by Sarah Keller explores the career of experimental filmmaker and visual artist Barbara Hammer. Hammer first garnered attention in the early 1970s for a series of films representing lesbian subjects and subjectivity. Over the five decades that followed, she made almost a hundred films and solidified her position as a pioneer of queer experimental cinema and art. In the first chapter, Keller covers Hammer's late 1960s-1970s work and explores the tensions between the representation of women's bodies and contemporary feminist theory. In the second chapter, Keller charts the filmmaker's physical move from the Bay Area to New York City, resulting in shifts in her artistic mode. The third chapter turns to Hammer's primarily documentary work of the 1990s and how it engages with the places she travels, the people she meets, and the histories she explores. In the fourth chapter, Keller then considers Hammer's legacy, both through the final films of her career-which combine the methods and ideas of the earlier decades-and her efforts to solidify and shape the ways in which the work would be remembered. In the final chapter, excerpts from the author's interviews with Hammer during the last three years of her life offer intimate perspectives and reflections on her work from the filmmaker herself. Hammer's full body of work as a case study allows readers to see why a much broader notion of feminist production and artistic process is necessary to understand art made by women in the past half century. Hammer's work-classically queer and politically feminist-presses at the edges of each of those notions, pushing beyond the frames that would not contain her dynamic artistic endeavors. Keller's survey of Hammer's work is a vital text for students and scholars of film, queer studies, and art history.

Barbara Hammer: Pushing Out of the Frame by Sarah Keller explores the career of experimental filmmaker and visual artist Barbara Hammer. Hammer first garnered attention in the early 1970s for a series of films representing lesbian subjects and subjectivity. Over the five decades that followed, she made almost a hundred films and solidified her position as a pioneer of queer experimental cinema and art. In the first chapter, Keller covers Hammer's late 1960s-1970s work and explores the tensions between the representation of women's bodies and contemporary feminist theory. In the second chapter, Keller charts the filmmaker's physical move from the Bay Area to New York City, resulting in shifts in her artistic mode. The third chapter turns to Hammer's primarily documentary work of the 1990s and how it engages with the places she travels, the people she meets, and the histories she explores. In the fourth chapter, Keller then considers Hammer's legacy, both through the final films of her career-which combine the methods and ideas of the earlier decades-and her efforts to solidify and shape the ways in which the work would be remembered. In the final chapter, excerpts from the author's interviews with Hammer during the last three years of her life offer intimate perspectives and reflections on her work from the filmmaker herself. Hammer's full body of work as a case study allows readers to see why a much broader notion of feminist production and artistic process is necessary to understand art made by women in the past half century. Hammer's work-classically queer and politically feminist-presses at the edges of each of those notions, pushing beyond the frames that would not contain her dynamic artistic endeavors. Keller's survey of Hammer's work is a vital text for students and scholars of film, queer studies, and art history.