Cinema and Anachronism

In this book, Daniele Dottorini establishes a starting point toward a theory of the anachronism of cinematic images through an exploration of existing films, theories, and discourses concerning the temporality of images that have shaped the history of cinema.

Dottorini examines the cinematic form as a specific way of working with the temporality of images, emphasizing its medium specificity in its ability to employ a confrontation with the history of both the image itself and the discourses that have reflected on it simultaneously, particularly within the contemporary sphere. The image is always in a sense spectral, phantasmal, and open, he argues – it is a field of tensions which has the unique ability to form connections to other images, epochs, gazes, and visions of the past as it is used time and again in new and different works.

By building on the work of scholars and artists that have come before him, including Warburg, Pasolini, Deleuze, Benjamin, Godard, and Herzog, among many others, Dottorini positions the image as not only – and not even primarily – a datapoint to be analyzed, but as a form that is constantly moving, changing, and forming new connections. Ultimately, this book constitutes a significant contribution to our understanding of the image as a path built through encounters and comparisons, which is but one facet of establishing a history of cinema as a story of returns and survivals.