Imagining Technological Art: Early German Film Theory

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Katharina Loew
Keyword(s):  
Film Theory ◽  
Folk Art ◽  
Mental Processes ◽  
Special Effects ◽  
German Film ◽  
Georg Lukacs ◽  
Spiritual Dimension ◽  
Material Reality ◽  
The Fantastic ◽  
Mass Entertainment

As a form of popular mass entertainment and an apparatus for the automatic reproduction of material reality, cinema’s artistic aspirations seemed futile. Some early commentators nonetheless asserted that the new medium could be a legitimate object of aesthetic scrutiny. In an attempt to fathom cinema’s immaterial values, early film theorists including Herbert Tannenbaum and Georg Lukács explored cinema’s kinship with folk art, mental processes and the fantastic. They argued that film technology, specifically special effects, could articulate ideas in a sensual form and thus provide a pathway to a spiritual dimension. As this chapter shows, their techno-romantic lines of argument conceptualized the medium within established aesthetics and set the stage for the recognition of cinema as the first technological art.

The Technological Sublime: Metropolis (1927)

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Katharina Loew
Keyword(s):  
Special Effects ◽  
Spiritual Dimension ◽  
The Sublime ◽  
Material Reality ◽  
Industrial Modernity ◽  
Technological Sublime ◽  
Technological Means ◽  
Mechanical Objects

Metropolis displays a deeply conflicting attitude toward industrial modernity. Conceived and marketed as a marvel of film technology, the film pursued the techno-romantic project of transcending material reality through technological means. What is more, the goal was to capture the unfathomability of technology itself. Metropolis simultaneously portrays technology as an agent of tyranny and dehumanization and flaunts it as spectacle. Special effects facilitate encounters with overpowering technological environments and omnipotent machines, which give rise to sentiments that are best described in terms of a “technological sublime.” The sublime characterizes experiences that go beyond the earthly and finite, to attain a spiritual dimension. In attributing transcendent qualities to mechanical objects, the technological sublime embodies the technoromantic paradigm.

Beyond Hollywood

2018 ◽  
pp. 113-128
Author(s):  
Maite Conde
Keyword(s):  
North American ◽  
Film Theory ◽  
American Film ◽  
Slave Labor ◽  
The North ◽  
Brazilian Cinema ◽  
Material Reality ◽  
Hollywood Movies ◽  
Brazilian Film

This chapter examines Brazilian director Humberto Mauro’s 1927 film Thesouro Perdido, which was influenced the North American film Tol'able David, directed by Henry King in 1921. The chapter examines discussions regarding mimicry, bringing them to bear specifically on early Brazilian cinema and Brazilian film theory and what has been dismissed as its imitative relationship to Hollywood movies. Analyzing the structure and aesthetics of Mauro’s film, the chapter discusses the differences between it and its Hollywood template, and it locates this difference in the country’s material reality, that is, the remnants of traditional patriarchal structures in Brazil and their roots in slave labor.

Modern Magicians: Guido Seeber and Eugen Schüfftan

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Katharina Loew
Keyword(s):  
Multiple Exposure ◽  
Special Effects ◽  
Material Reality

Two technicians had a particularly formative impact on the evolution of special effects in Germany. Film pioneer Guido Seeber favoured methods like multiple exposure composites, which allow the cinematographer to excel both technically and creatively. Aiming at forging convincing composite spaces on screen, Eugen Schüfftan invented the only widely used commercial special-effects technique originating in Europe, the Schüfftan process. In similar ways, Seeber’s photographic and Schüfftan’s perceptual effects construe technology as cinema’s core creative tool and the cinematic image as fundamentally malleable. Both shared technoromantic views, which is apparent from their devotion to the goal of film art and commitment to devising medium-specific means for transcending material reality and expressing emotions and ideas.

Introduction: Special Effects and the Techno-Romantic Paradigm

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Katharina Loew
Keyword(s):  
Crucial Role ◽  
Film History ◽  
Physical Reality ◽  
Silent Film ◽  
Technological Innovations ◽  
Film Culture ◽  
Silent Cinema ◽  
Special Effects ◽  
Material Reality ◽  
Industrial Modernity

German silent cinema is famous for its unconventional aesthetics and film-technological innovations. These characteristics were the result of efforts to reconcile the new medium’s automatic reproductions of physical reality with idealist conceptions of art. Special effects played a crucial role in this endeavour. They afforded creative experiments with the cinematic apparatus and inspired filmmakers to convey ideas and emotions. Special effects embodied the “techno-romantic” project of construing technology as a means for transcending material reality. This common response to industrial modernity profoundly shaped German silent film culture. The techno-romantic paradigm formed the basis of one of the most creative periods in film history and proved instrumental in the evolution of cinematic expressivity and film art.

Conclusion: Techno-Romantic Cinema from the Silent to the Digital Era

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Katharina Loew
Keyword(s):  
Research Area ◽  
Human Mind ◽  
Visual Effects ◽  
Special Effects ◽  
Moving Image ◽  
Machine Technology ◽  
Digital Era ◽  
Material Reality ◽  
Computer Generated Imagery ◽  
New Research

Techno-romantic thought, which construes machine technology as a means to reach beyond material reality, is still with us today. It is reflected in the vogue of speculative fiction in contemporary moving image media, which has been made possible by radical advances in digital visual effects. Computer-generated imagery has brought into reach the fully malleable photograph, a dream that epitomizes a major triumph of the human mind over outside reality and thus an essentially techno-romantic fantasy. The same ambition already animated German silent filmmakers, who saw special effects as a way to shape mechanically produced images. Their use of trick technology for conveying thoughts and emotions gives rise to a new research area: special/visual effects as artistic tools.

The Cinematographic Archive: Selections from Early German Film Theory

October ◽  
2014 ◽  
Vol 148 ◽  
pp. 27-38
Keyword(s):  
Film Theory ◽  
Henri Bergson ◽  
Trade Journal ◽  
Historical Reconstruction ◽  
German Film ◽  
Creative Evolution ◽  
Living Form ◽  
Industrial Modernity ◽  
Ordinary Knowledge ◽  
One Year

Over a century ago, at a time when Henri Bergson deployed the cinematograph as a metaphor for “the mechanism of our ordinary knowledge” in Creative Evolution (1907), other, lesser-known theorists envisaged the medium's potential to offer unique modes of perception and cognition. For these thinkers, the cinematograph did not signify a mechanical, spatialized temporality pervasive within industrial modernity, but instead provided a novel means of experiencing time and history. Just one year after the publication of Bergson's book, Ludwig Brauner wrote an article for Der Kinematograph, Germany's first film trade journal, calling for the creation of “cinematographic archives” in the country's municipalities. Brauner juxtaposed film with traditional sources of historical reconstruction, distinguishing the new medium not only for its lucid, impartial recording of past events but also for its effortlessly lifelike form of documentation. Imagining that the cinematograph had been invented a hundred years prior, Brauner stated, “A single filmstrip would offer us the possibility of capturing the spirit of that time in living form” (p. 29 below).

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