This intriguing volume sheds light on the diverse world of collecting film- and media-related materials. Lucy Fischer's introduction explores theories of collecting and representations of collecting and collections in film, while arguing that collections of film ephemera and other media-related collections are an important way in to understanding the relationship between material culture and film and media studies; she notes that the collectors have various motivations and types of collections. In the eleven chapters that follow, media studies scholars analyze a variety of fascinating collected materials, from Doris Day magazines to Godzilla action figures and LEGOs. While most contributors discuss their personal collections, some also offer valuable insight into specific collections of others. In many cases, collections that began as informal and personal have been built up, accessioned, and reorganized to create teaching and research materials which have significantly contributed to the field of film and media studies. Readers are offered glimpses into diverse collections comprised of films, fan magazines, records, comics, action figures, design artifacts, costumes, props- including Buffy the Vampire Slayer costumes, Planet of the Apes publicity materials, and Amazing Spider Man comics. Recollecting Collecting interrogates and illustrates the meaning and practical nature of film and media collections while also considering the vast array of personal and professional motivations behind their assemblage.

An in-depth study of the expanding role of the moving image in British art over the past thirty years Over the past three decades the moving image has grown from a marginalized medium of British art into one of the nation's most vital areas of artistic practice. How did we get here? Artists' Moving Image in Britain Since 1989 seeks to provide answers, unfolding some of the narratives-disparate, entwined, and often colorful-that have come to define this field. Ambitious in scope, this anthology considers artists and artworks alongside the organizations, institutions, and economies in which they exist. Writings by scholars from both art history and film studies, curators from diverse backgrounds, and artists from across generations offer a provocative and multifaceted assessment of the evolving position of the moving image in the British art world and consider the effects of numerous technological, institutional, and creative developments. Distributed for the Paul Mellon Center for Studies in British Art

Images have never been as freely circulated as they are today. They have also never been so tightly controlled. As with the birth of photography, digital reproduction has created new possibilities for the duplication and consumption of images, offering greater dissemination and access. But digital reproduction has also stoked new anxieties concerning authenticity and ownership. From this contemporary vantage point, After Uniqueness traces the ambivalence of reproducibility through the intersecting histories of experimental cinema and the moving image in art, examining how artists, filmmakers, and theorists have found in the copy a utopian promise or a dangerous inauthenticity-or both at once. From the sale of film in limited editions on the art market to the downloading of bootlegs, from the singularity of live cinema to video art broadcast on television, Erika Balsom investigates how the reproducibility of the moving image has been embraced, rejected, and negotiated by major figures including Stan Brakhage, Leo Castelli, and Gregory Markopoulos. Through a comparative analysis of selected distribution models and key case studies, she demonstrates how the question of image circulation is central to the history of film and video art. After Uniqueness shows that distribution channels are more than neutral pathways; they determine how we encounter, interpret, and write the history of the moving image as an art form.

This intriguing volume sheds light on the diverse world of collecting film- and media-related materials. Lucy Fischer's introduction explores theories of collecting and representations of collecting and collections in film, while arguing that collections of film ephemera and other media-related collections are an important way in to understanding the relationship between material culture and film and media studies; she notes that the collectors have various motivations and types of collections. In the eleven chapters that follow, media studies scholars analyze a variety of fascinating collected materials, from Doris Day magazines to Godzilla action figures and LEGOs. While most contributors discuss their personal collections, some also offer valuable insight into specific collections of others. In many cases, collections that began as informal and personal have been built up, accessioned, and reorganized to create teaching and research materials which have significantly contributed to the field of film and media studies. Readers are offered glimpses into diverse collections comprised of films, fan magazines, records, comics, action figures, design artifacts, costumes, props- including Buffy the Vampire Slayer costumes, Planet of the Apes publicity materials, and Amazing Spider Man comics. Recollecting Collecting interrogates and illustrates the meaning and practical nature of film and media collections while also considering the vast array of personal and professional motivations behind their assemblage.

Images have never been as freely circulated as they are today. They have also never been so tightly controlled. As with the birth of photography, digital reproduction has created new possibilities for the duplication and consumption of images, offering greater dissemination and access. But digital reproduction has also stoked new anxieties concerning authenticity and ownership. From this contemporary vantage point, After Uniqueness traces the ambivalence of reproducibility through the intersecting histories of experimental cinema and the moving image in art, examining how artists, filmmakers, and theorists have found in the copy a utopian promise or a dangerous inauthenticity-or both at once. From the sale of film in limited editions on the art market to the downloading of bootlegs, from the singularity of live cinema to video art broadcast on television, Erika Balsom investigates how the reproducibility of the moving image has been embraced, rejected, and negotiated by major figures including Stan Brakhage, Leo Castelli, and Gregory Markopoulos. Through a comparative analysis of selected distribution models and key case studies, she demonstrates how the question of image circulation is central to the history of film and video art. After Uniqueness shows that distribution channels are more than neutral pathways; they determine how we encounter, interpret, and write the history of the moving image as an art form.

Artists, filmmakers, art historians, poets, literary critics, anthropologists, theorists, and others, investigate one of the most vital areas of cultural practice: documentary. Contemporary engagements with documentary are multifaceted and complex, reaching across disciplines to explore the intersections of politics and aesthetics, representation and reality, truth and illusion. Discarding the old notions of "fly on the wall" immediacy or quasi-scientific aspirations to objectivity, critics now understand documentary not as the neutral picturing of reality but as a way of coming to terms with reality through images and narrative. This book collects writings by artists, filmmakers, art historians, poets, literary critics, anthropologists, theorists, and others, to investigate one of the most vital areas of cultural practice: documentary. Their investigations take many forms-essays, personal memoirs, interviews, poetry. Contemporary art turned away from the medium and toward the world, using photography and the moving image to take up global perspectives. Documentary filmmakers, meanwhile, began to work in the gallery context. The contributors consider the hybridization of art and film, and the "documentary turn" of contemporary art. They discuss digital technology and the "crisis of faith" caused by manipulation and generation of images, and the fading of the progressive social mandate that has historically characterized documentary. They consider invisible data and visible evidence; problems of archiving; and surveillance and biometric control, forms of documentation that call for "informatic opacity" as a means of evasion. Contributors Ariella Azoulay, Zach Blas, Christa Blumlinger, Stella Bruzzi, Lucien Castaing-Taylor, Kris Fallon, Evgenia Giannouri, Ben Lerner, SylveIre Lotringer, Antonia Majaca, Sohrab Mohebbi, Volker Pantenburg, Veireina Paravel, Christopher Pinney, Ben Rivers, and Eyal Sivan Copublished with the Haus der Kulturen der Welt (HKW), Berlin