Tobias Nagl
European Visions: Small Cinemas in Transition (co-editor)
This volume examines the challenges which cinemas in small European countries have faced since 1989. It explores how notions of scale and "small cinemas" relate to questions of territory, transnational media flows and globalization. Employing a variety of approaches from industry analysis to Deleuze & Guattari's concept of the "minor," contributions address the relationship of small cinemas to Hollywood, the role of history and memory, and the politics of place in post-Socialist cinemas. 2015, Columbia University Press.
Die unheimliche Maschine: Rasse und Repräsentation im Weimarer Kino/The Uncanny Machine: Race and Representation in Weimar Cinema
The book "The Uncanny Machine. Race and Representation in Weimar Cinema" examines the exchange relationship between popular anthropology, national identity and colonial nostalgia after the end of the First World War. Based on approaches from postcolonial theory, Tobias Nagl analyzes the production and reception of a large number of forgotten or lost feature films and documentaries in their aesthetic, political and film-economic context. In a wide variety of genres - from the popular adventure serial to the ethnographic cultural film to the music film - Nagl recognizes common ways of constructing a non-white other, which served as an uncanny projection surface for ambivalent desires and triggered both fascination and fear. At the same time, Nagl's book reconstructs the forgotten history of black and Asian migrants in Germany, who found a living as "exotics" in the Weimar cinema, but also intervened against their racist representation. The production of colonial imagery in the cinema can thus be read as a social relationship between historical actors. Beyond the film historical canon, the book provides a valuable and material-rich archeology of Weimar cinema. 2009, Edition Text + Kritik.
