Scott MacKenzie (ed.): Film Manifestos and Global Cinema Cultures: A Critical Anthology (2014)

“This is the first book to collect manifestos from the global history of cinema, providing the first historical and theoretical account of the role played by film manifestos in filmmaking and film culture. Focusing equally on political and aesthetic manifestos, Scott MacKenzie uncovers a neglected, yet nevertheless central history of the cinema, exploring a series of documents that postulate ways in which to re-imagine the cinema and, in the process, re-imagine the world.

This volume collects the major European “waves” and figures (Eisenstein, Truffaut, Bergman, Free Cinema, Oberhausen, Dogme ‘95); Latin American Third Cinemas (Birri, Sanjinés, Espinosa, Solanas); radical art and the avant-garde (Buñuel, Brakhage, Deren, Mekas, Ono, Sanborn); and world cinemas (Iimura, Makhmalbaf, Sembene, Sen). It also contains previously untranslated manifestos co-written by figures including Bollaín, Debord, Hermosillo, Isou, Kieslowski, Painlevé, Straub, and many others. Thematic sections address documentary cinema, aesthetics, feminist and queer film cultures, pornography, film archives, Hollywood, and film and digital media. Also included are texts traditionally left out of the film manifestos canon, such as the Motion Picture Production Code and Pius XI’s Vigilanti Cura, which nevertheless played a central role in film culture.”

Publisher University of California Press, 2014
ISBN 0520276744, 9780520276741
xxi+651 pages
via slowrotation

Author’s talk (video, 2017, 20 min).

Reviews: Wheeler Winston Dixon (Film International), Matthew Hunt, Bill Nichols (Film Quarterly).

Publisher
WorldCat

PDF, PDF (updated on 2019-7-14)

Harald Szeemann, et al.: Documenta 5, catalogue (1972) [DE]

“Even decades later, Documenta 5, the exhibition that was criticized in 1972 as being “bizarre.. vulgar.. sadistic” by Hilton Kramer (NYT) and “monstrous.. overtly deranged” by Barbara Rose (NYM), resonates today as one of the most important exhibitions in history. Both hailed and derided by artists and critics, the exhibition was the largest, most expensive and most diverse of any exhibition anywhere, and foreshadowed all large-scale, collaboratively curated, comprehensive mega-shows to come.

Chiefly curated by the Swiss curator, Harald Szeemann, it was a pioneering, radically different presentation that was conceived as a 100-day event, with performances and happenings, outsider art, even non-art, as well as repeated Joseph Beuys lectures, and an installation of Claes Oldenburg’s Mouse Museum, among many other atypical inclusions. The show widely promoted awareness of a contract known as The Artist’s Reserved Rights Transfer and Sale Agreement, which protects artists’ ongoing intellectual and financial rights with regard to their production.” (Source)

“Featuring the works of over 170 artists and an equally expansive variety of materials and subjects drawn from popular cultural materials such as science fiction publications, kitsch objects, exploitation films, as well as advertising imagery, in addition to the more anticipated painting and sculpture – Documenta 5 valiantly attempted to bridge the gap between art, culture, science and the broader society.

A lasting highlight of the exhibition was the graphic logo for the show designed by Edward Ruscha. Commissioned by Szeeman, Ruscha’s graphic image for the show featured ants arranged in the word ‘Docu / menta’ and the number ‘5.’ The emblem was used on the exhibition’s poster and catalogue cover.” (Source)

Contents of Part B:
1 Hans Heinz Holz: Kritische Theorie des ästhetischen Zeichens (catalogue foreword, 86 pp),
2 Bazon Brock & Karl Heinz Krings: Audiovisuelles Vorwort (audiovisual foreword, 19 pp),
3 Eberhard Roters: Trivialrealismus & Trivialemblematik (16 pp),
4 Ingolf Bauer: Bilderwelt und Froemmigkeit (10 pp),
5 Gesellschaftliche Ikonographie an zwei Beispielen (8 pp),
6 Charles Wilp, Hans Heinz Holz: Werbung (4 pp),
7 Reiner Diederich, Richard Grübling, Klaus Staeck: Politische Propaganda (14 pp),
8 Pierre Versins: Science Fiction/Heute von gestern gesehen (10 pp),
9 François Burkhardt: Utopie/Morgen von gestern gesehen (16 pp),
10 Ursula Barthelmess, Hans-Henning Borgelt, Linde Burkhardt, Wolfgang Hoebig: Spiel und Wirklichkeit (14 pp),
11 Theodor Spoerri: Bildnerei der Giesteskranken (18 pp),
12 Gerhard Buettenbender, Sigurd Hermes: Film (28 pp),
13 Museen von Künstlern (17 pp),
14 Sozialistischer Realismus (1 p),
15 Jean-Christophe Ammann: Realismus (58 pp),
16 Johannes Cladders, Harald Szeemann: Individuelle Mythologien – Selbstdarstellung: a) Performance, b) Film – Prozesse (220 pp),
17 Konrad Fischer, Klaus Honnef, Gisela Kaminski: Idee + Idee / Licht (92 pp),
18 Information + The Artist’s Reserved Rights Transfer and Sale Agreement (44 pp),
19 Verzeichnis der ausgestellten Werke
20 Allgemeine Bibliographie
21 Waehrend: Ereigniskalender
22 Nachher 1: Text
23 Nachher 2: Bild
24 Nachher 3: Presse
25 Fotonachweis

documenta 5. Befragung der Realität – Bildwelten heute
Edited by Harald Szeemann, Marlis Grüterich, Katia von den Velden, Jennifer Gough-Cooper
Publisher documenta and Bertelsmann, Kassel, 1972
ISBN 3570028569, 9783570028568
64+80 & 740+ pages
via The DOR (at Archive.org)

Analyses and commentaries:
3sat TV documentary (video, 41 min, 1972, DE)
Der Spiegel (1972, DE)
Klaus Herding & Hans-Ernst Mittig on Holz’s foreword (Kritische Berichte, 1973, DE)
Documenta 5 in Art Since 1900 (2004, EN)
Dirk Schwarze (Documenta Archiv, 2014, DE)
Maria Bremer (Stedelijk Studies, 2015, EN)

documenta Archiv, (2)
Wikipedia (DE)
WorldCat

Part A (144 pp, PDF, 57 MB)
Part B (740+ pp, PDF, 287 MB, sections 19-24 missing; updated on 2023-3-28)

André Malraux: The Voices of Silence (1951–)

“This is not a history of art, but a work on the sculptor’s and painter’s arts of the world by a passionate art lover. The organization is by ideas; the illustrations are drawn from all peoples, countries, and times. Each picture is placed within a page or two of its discussion in the text. As an idea develops, the places and periods of its illustrations wander. The coherence is an inward one, not one of objective order.

Malraux starts from the premise that with the broadening of our knowledge of the world, and especially by the aid of archeology and photography, the many visual arts developed by the human race in its history are now mainly known and accessible. They are as it were in one grand museum without walls–the museum of our cognizance.

Further, they are known to many creative artists, and will be known to more, and will influence them. In other words, the situation no longer exists which has characterized the appearance of most arts heretofore, namely of growing up insulated, in regional solitude and self-sufficiency. From now on, the history of human visual art will be of a new order.

Another idea Malraux develops is that while painting and sculpture do represent objects, the artist, contrary to legend and public opinion, develops his work out of his ability to see–not nature, but his predecessors, and to transcend them. Style is thus a social phenomenon, an interrelation of men through their works.” (from a review by A.L. Kroeber, American Anthropologist, 1957)

Originally published in 3 volumes as Psychologie de l’art, 1947-49, the work had been thoroughly rewritten and published as Les Voix du silence, Gallimard, 1951.

Translated by Stuart Gilbert
First published in English by Doubleday, 1953
Reprinted by Secker & Warburg, London, 1954, 661 pages
Publisher Paladin, UK, 1974, 679 pages

Reviews: Maurice Blanchot (1950/1997), William Barrett (Saturday Review, 1953).

PDF (1954, 44 MB, no OCR, IA, added on 2023-5-3)
PDF (1974, 81 MB, no OCR)