c:I[5808,["173","static/chunks/173-1a4bd29b66079ae8.js","107","static/chunks/107-46e7c6933df1d959.js","206","static/chunks/206-e1dd111232a15e24.js","350","static/chunks/app/author/%5Bid%5D/page-12067c059dbbe9dc.js"],"default"] d:I[7970,["173","static/chunks/173-1a4bd29b66079ae8.js","107","static/chunks/107-46e7c6933df1d959.js","206","static/chunks/206-e1dd111232a15e24.js","350","static/chunks/app/author/%5Bid%5D/page-12067c059dbbe9dc.js"],"Image"] e:I[7682,["173","static/chunks/173-1a4bd29b66079ae8.js","107","static/chunks/107-46e7c6933df1d959.js","206","static/chunks/206-e1dd111232a15e24.js","350","static/chunks/app/author/%5Bid%5D/page-12067c059dbbe9dc.js"],"default"] f:I[7268,["173","static/chunks/173-1a4bd29b66079ae8.js","107","static/chunks/107-46e7c6933df1d959.js","206","static/chunks/206-e1dd111232a15e24.js","350","static/chunks/app/author/%5Bid%5D/page-12067c059dbbe9dc.js"],"default"] 10:T66d,Operating between film theory, media philosophy, archival practice, and audiovisual research, Jiri Anger focuses on the relationship between figuration and materiality in early films, experimental found footage cinema, and video essays.

Would it be possible to do film theory from below, through the perspective of moving-image objects, of their multifarious details and facets, however marginal, unintentional, or aleatory they might be? Could we treat scratches, stains, and shakes in archival footage as speculatively and aesthetically generative features? Do these material actors have the capacity to create “weird shapes” within the figurative image that decenter, distort, and transform the existing conceptual and methodological frameworks?

Building on his theoretical as well as practical experience with the recently digitized corpus of the first Czech films, created by Jan Kríženecký between 1898 and 1911, the author demonstrates how technological defects and accidents in archival films shape their aesthetic function and our understanding of the materiality of film in

Jiří Anger

Books by Jiří Anger

Towards a Film Theory from Below: Archival Film and the Aesthetics of the Crack-Up