Sergei M. Eisenstein: Notes for a General History of Cinema (2016)

“This comprehensive volume of Eisenstein’s writings is the first-ever English-language edition of his newly discovered notes for a general history of the cinema, a project he undertook in 1946-47 before his death in 1948. In his writings, Eisenstein presents the main coordinates of a history of the cinema without mentioning specific directors or films: what we find instead is a vast genealogy of all the media and of all the art forms that have preceded cinema’s birth and accompanied the first decades of its history, exploring the same expressive possibilities that cinema has explored and responding to the same, deeply rooted, “urges” cinema has responded to. Cinema appears here as the heir of a very long tradition that includes death masks, ritual processions, wax museums, diorama and panorama, and as a medium in constant transformation, that far from being locked in a stable form continues to redefine itself.

The texts by Eisenstein are accompanied by a series of critical essays written by some of the world’s most qualified Eisenstein scholars.”

Edited by Naum Kleiman and Antonio Somaini
Publisher Amsterdam University Press, Amsterdam, 2016
Creative Commons BY-NC-ND 3.0
ISBN 9789048517114
545 pages

Publisher
OAPEN
WorldCat

PDF, PDF (7 MB)

Expanded Cinema: Art, Performance and Film (2011)

“The term ‘Expanded Cinema’ encompasses film, video, performance and multiple-projection. While video in the gallery has received much attention recently, Expanded Cinema looks at many kinds of experiment beyond the gallery space. Leading scholars from Europe and North America trace expanded and multi-screen cinema from its origins in early abstract cinema and the Bauhaus era to post-war happenings and live events in Europe and the US, the first video and multi-media experiments of the 1960s, the fusion of multi-screen art with sonic art and music from the 1970s onwards, right up to the digital age. The book brings new perspectives to bear on the work of established American pioneers such as Carolee Schneemann and Stan Vanderbeek as well as exploring expanded cinema in Western and Central Europe, the influence of video art on new media technologies, and the role of British expanded cinema from the 1970s to the present day. Uniquely, it situates expanded cinema in the context of the radical arts. It shows how artists challenged the conventions of spectatorship, the viewing space and the audience, to explore a new participatory and performative cinema beyond the single screen. It includes interviews with key artists as well as previously unpublished artists’ texts.”

Edited by A.L. Rees, Duncan White, Stephen Ball and David Curtis
Publisher Tate Publishing, London, 2011
ISBN 1854379747, 9781854379740
312 pages
via evernever

Reviews: Andrew Utterson (Screen), Richard L MacDonald (MIRAJ).

Publisher
WorldCat

PDF (61 MB, updated on 2023-9-25)

Peter Rist, Timothy Barnard (eds.): South American Cinema: A Critical Filmography, 1915-1994 (1996)

“A team of contributors has compiled entries on 140 significant South American feature and documentary films from the silent era until 1994. The entries discuss each film’s subject matter, critical reception, and social and political contexts, as well as its production, distribution, and exhibition history, including technical credits.”

Publisher Garland Publishing, New York and London, 1996
ISBN 0824045742, 9780824045746
xx+405 pages

Publisher
WorldCat

PDFs (from editor; access has been disabled, version at Internet Archive, access disabled as well)