The Promise of Cinema

Rich in implications for our present era of media change,&#160;<I>The Promise of Cinema</I> offers a compelling new vision of film theory. The volume conceives of &ldquo;theory&rdquo; not as a fixed body of canonical texts, but as a dynamic set of reflections on the very idea of cinema and the possibilities once associated with it. Unearthing more than 275 early-twentieth-century German texts, this ground-breaking documentation leads readers into a world that was striving to assimilate modernity&rsquo;s most powerful new medium. We encounter lesser-known essays by B&eacute;la Bal&aacute;zs, Walter Benjamin, and Siegfried Kracauer alongside interventions from the realms of aesthetics, education, industry, politics, science, and technology. The book also features programmatic writings from the Weimar avant-garde and from directors such as Fritz Lang and F.W. Murnau. Nearly all documents appear in English for the first time; each is meticulously introduced and annotated. The most comprehensive collection of German writings on film published to date, <I>The Promise of Cinema</I> is an essential resource for students and scholars of film and media, critical theory, and European culture and history.