
Picturing the Primitive
Visual Culture, Ethnography and Early German Cinema
Assenka Oksiloff(Author)
Palgrave Macmillan (Publisher)
Published on 27. February 2002
Book
Hardback
240 pages
978-0-312-23554-3 (ISBN)
Description
This work explores the relationship between early German cinema and anthropology's fascination with "primitive" cultures. At the core of this study is a mythic first contact between the camera and the non-Western body. The term that binds the two is the "primitive", referring both to cultures ostensibly existing outside of modern time and also to a way of seeing the world via the lens. Asseka Oksiloff examines how the movie camera, with its capacity to record reality in a supposedly direct fashion, is legitimated by the primitive body in the first decades of the 20th century. From the earliest research footage to popularized adventure footage, the film theory, the "primitive" holds out the promise of a critical space that affirms modern, technological vision.
More details
Language
English
Place of publication
Basingstoke
United Kingdom
Target group
College/higher education
Professional and scholarly
Illustrations
Illustrations
Dimensions
Height: 222 mm
Width: 141 mm
Weight
393 gr
ISBN-13
978-0-312-23554-3 (9780312235543)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Other editions
Additional editions

E-Book
04/2016
1st Edition
Palgrave MacMillan
from
€104.99
Available for download

Book
05/2002
St Martin's Press
€53.49
Shipment within 10-20 days
Person
ASSEKA OKSILOFF is an Assistant Professor of German at New York University. She has written on modernist film and literary aesthetics, contemporary film, and romanticism. She is co-author of the critical anthology of early German romantic writings Theory as Practice.
Content
Introduction - The Body as Artifact: Early Cinema and Ethnography - The Evolution of Vision - Paradise Lost: Adventure and Colonialist Films of the 1910s and 1920s - Leo Frobenius and Kino-Vision - Primal Screen: Early Film Theory and Ethnography - Primitive Modernism: Hofmannsthal's Cinematic Aesthetics - Ethnotopia: F.W. Murnau's Tabu