Afterlives : Allegories of Film and Mortality in Early Weimar Germany

What is it about?

Weimar cultural critics and intellectuals have repeatedly linked the dynamic movement of the cinema to discourses of life and animation. Combining close readings of individual films with detailed interpretations of philosophical texts produced in Weimar Germany immediately following the Great War, Afterlives shows how these films teach viewers about living and dying within our modern, mass mediated context. Choe places relatively underanalyzed films such as F. W. Murnau's The Haunted Castle and Arthur Robison's Warning Shadows alongside Martin Heidegger's early seminars on phenomenology, Sigmund Freud's Reflections upon War and Death and Max Scheler's critique of ressentiment. It is the experience of war trauma that underpins these correspondences, and Choe foregrounds life and death in the films by highlighting how they allegorize this opposition through the thematics of animation and stasis.

Featured Image

Photo by Clemens van Lay on Unsplash

Photo by Clemens van Lay on Unsplash

Why is it important?

This book reflects upon the afterlives of the moving image in our contemporary media landscape. By understanding the art of the cinema in Weimar culture, Afterlives shows us how we can understand the ethics of our animate and inanimate others.