POSTWAR: The Films of Daniel Eisenberg

Edited by Jeffrey Skoller, Published 2010 — Black Dog Publishing

(ISBN: 9781906155957)
 

"Daniel Eisenberg's films are celluloid tapestries woven together out of histories and memories, night and day, daily life and reflection." 
— Ulrike Ottinger, Filmmaker, Berlin
 

POSTWAR: The Films of Daniel Eisenberg is the first major critical study of the unique American filmmaker Daniel Eisenberg.  With essays by some of the most respected scholars on contemporary film and media art, history and cultural studies, POSTWAR places the filmmaker's work in the context of contemporary cultural theory and experimental media practice.

Over the last three decades, Eisenberg has forged a unique body of films that have become internationally recognized for expanding the boundaries between traditions of the personal avant-garde film and historical documentary.  POSTWAR focuses on Eisenberg's four thematically connected films, made between 1981 and 2003, exploring the on-going implications of the events of the Second World War and the fall of the Berlin Wall as they continue to unfold in the present. Eisenberg's cinema of time shows how such events continue to be structuring elements in our personal and political lives. As works of visual history, these exquisitely made films engage contemporary questions about the relationships between the past, present and future, how the meanings of events transform over time, and the representation of those elements of past events that defy linear narrative forms.

Richly illustrated, POSTWAR creates an exciting new dialogue between text, photographs, film stills, and other visual documents, crafting a new discourse between critical analysis and visual thinking. The refracted and reconfigured elements of the book mirror the ways in which Eisenberg's films bring image and text into direct contact, and how this poetic textuality constructs a dialogue with history. This volume offers Eisenberg's dense and critically rich films to a wide audience of filmmakers, scholars, and students of history, art, and media.

Contributing writers: Nora Alter, Leora Auslander, Raymond Bellour, Christa Blümlinger, Scott Durham, Tom Gunning, Jeffrey Skoller, and a post-script by Daniel Eisenberg.


This book is a companion piece for the DVD Box Set POSTWAR: The Films of Daniel Eisenberg