Alexander Kluge

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Alexander Kluge
Not to be confused with Alexandra Kluge, his sister and a film actress.
Alexander Kluge
Kluge in 2008.
Born 14 February 1932
Halberstadt in present-day Saxony-Anhalt, Germany
Occupation Author, film director
Website
http:/ / www. kluge-alexander.de kluge-alexander.de
Alexander Kluge (born 14 February 1932) is a German author and film director.
Early life, education and early career
Kluge was born in Halberstadt in present-day Saxony-Anhalt, Germany.
After growing up during World War II, he studied history, law and music at the University of Marburg Germany,
and the Johann Wolfgang Goethe University of Frankfurt am Main in Germany. He received his doctorate in law in
1956.
While studying in Frankfurt, Kluge befriended the philosopher Theodor Adorno, who was teaching at the Institute
for Social Research, or Frankfurt School.
[1]
Kluge served as a legal counsel for the Institute, and began writing his
earliest stories during this period. At Adorno's suggestion, he also began to investigate filmmaking, and in 1958,
Adorno introduced him to German filmmaker Fritz Lang, for whom Kluge worked as an assistant on the making of
The Tiger of Eschnapur.
[2]
Cinematic works
Kluge directed his first film in 1960, Brutalitt im Stein (Brutality in Stone), a twelve-minute, black and white,
lyrical montage work which, against the German commercial (Papas Kino) cinematic amnesia of the prior decade,
inaugurated an exploration of the Nazi past. The film premired in 1961 at what would become the showcase for the
new generation of German filmmakers, the Westdeutsche Kurzfilmtage (now known as the International Short Film
Festival Oberhausen) in Oberhausen, Germany.
Kluge was one of twenty-six signatories to the Oberhausen Manifesto of 1962, which marked the launch of the New
German Cinema. That same year, with filmmakers Edgar Reitz and Detlev Schleiermacher, Kluge established the
Ulm Institut fr Filmgestaltung, to promote the critical and aesthetic practices of Young German Film and the New
German Cinema.
Alexander Kluge
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In 1965 he was a member of the jury at the 15th Berlin International Film Festival.
[]
He has gone on to direct a number of films which have an inherent critique of commercial cinema and television
through the creation of a counter-public sphere and their deployment of experimental forms, including montage.
They include Abschied von Gestern (Yesterday Girl) (1966), an adaptation of Kluge's story "Anita G."; Die Artisten
in der Zirkuskuppel. Ratlos (Artists under the Big Top. Perplexed) (1968); and The Assault of the Present on the Rest
of Time (1985).
Literary works
"We dont perceive a contradiction between writing books, making films or producing a television program.
These days you cant choose how you want to express yourself anymore."
!Alexander Kluge
Kluge is also one of the major German fiction writers of the late-20th century and an important social critic. His
fictional works, which tend toward the short story form, are significant for their formal experimentation and
insistently critical thematics. Constituting a form of analytical fiction, they utilize techniques of narrative disruption,
mixed genres, interpolation of non-literary texts and documents, and perspectival shifts. The texts frequently employ
a flat, ironic tone. One frequent effect approximates what Viktor Shklovsky and the Russian formalists identified as
defamiliarization or ostranenie. Kluge has used several of the stories as the bases for his films.
Kluge's major works of social criticism include ffentlichkeit und Erfahrung. Zur Organisationsanalyse von
brgerlicher und proletarischer ffentlichkeit, co-written with Oskar Negt and originally published in 1972, and
"Geschichte und Eigensinn", also co-authored with Negt. "ffentlichkeit und Erfahrung" has been translated into
English as Public Sphere and Experience. Toward an Analysis of the Bourgeois and Proletarian Public Sphere and
"Geschichte und Eigensinn" is currently being translated into English and will appear in an edition published by MIT
Press in the future.
"Public Sphere and Experience" revisits and expands Jrgen Habermas's notion of the public sphere (which he
articulated in his book "Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere") and calls for the development of a new
"proletarian public sphere" grounded in the life experience of the working class. "Geschichte und Eigensinn"
continues this project and tries to rethink the very nature of proletarian experience and develops a theory of "living
labour" grounded in the work of Karl Marx.
He has also published numerous texts on literary, film and television criticism.
Awards
His awards include the Italian Literature Prize Isola d'Elba (1967), and almost every major German-language literary
prize, including the Heinrich von Kleist Prize (1985), the Heinrich-Bll-Preis (1993) and the Schiller Memorial Prize
(2001).
Kluge received the Hanns-Joachim-Friedrich Prize for TV Journalism (2001).
He has also received the Georg-Bchner-Preis (2003), Germany's highest literary award.
In recent years Kluge received the triennial Adorno prize of 2009.
[3]
Alexander Kluge
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Selected filmography
1966 Abschied von gestern (director and screenwriter)
1968 Artists Under the Big Top. Perplexed (director, producer and screenwriter)
1973 Gelegenheitsarbeit einer Sklavin (director and screenwriter)
1976 Der Starke Ferdinand (director, narrator, producer and screenwriter)
1978 Germany in Autumn (director and screenwriter)
1979 Die Patriotin (director and producer)
1980 Der Kandidat (director)
1982 Biermann-Film (director)
1983 Die Macht der Gefhle (director, narrator, producer and screenwriter)
1983 Krieg und Frieden (director and screenwriter (adapted from his book))
1985 Vermischte Nachrichten (director, producer and screenwriter)
1986 The Blind Director (director and screenwriter)
1989 Schweinegeld, Ein Mrchen der Gebrder Nimm (producer)
1995 Die Nacht der Regisseure (actor "#as himself (uncredited))
2008 Nachrichten aus der ideologischen Antike - Marx/Eisenstein/Das Kapital (director and screenwriter)
Selected fiction
1962 Lebenslufe (Case Histories, also published earlier in English as Attendance List for a Funeral) !#this
collection includes the story "Anita G.," which Kluge adapted into cinematic form as Yesterday Girl.
1964 Schlachtbeschreibung (The Battle)
1973 Lernprozesse mit tdlichem Ausgang (Learning Processes with a Deadly Outcome) !#this work is one of
Kluge's original contributions to the science-fiction genre.
1977 Neue Geschichten. Hefte 1!18. "Unheimlichkeit der Zeit" (New Histories. Notebooks 1!18. "The
Uncanniness of Time") !#a collection of several hundred stories, some only one-page long, interspersed with
documents, charts and images.
1984 Die Macht der Gefhle (The Power of Feelings)
2003 Die Lcke, die der Teufel lt. (The Devils Blind Spot) !#this collection of 500 stories includes some
earlier works; an abridged English-language version appeared in 2004.
2006 Tr an Tr mit einem anderen Leben. 350 neue Geschichten. !#a collection of 350 new stories.
Anthologies
These two volumes together contain the central works of Kluge's and Oskar Negt's collaborative philosophy as well
as Kluge's literary work. Some new material was published in each edition.
2000 Chronik der Gefhle (Chronicle of Feeling) !#a two-volume edition (Basisgeschichten and Lebenslufe)
including the works Schlachtbeschreibung, Lernprozesse mit tdlichen Ausgang, Lebenslufe and Neue
Geschichten. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp.
2001 Der unterschtzte Mensch (The Undervalued Man) !#a two-volume edition including Suchbegriffe (26
conversations and interviews first published in a book format), ffentlichkeit und Erfahrung, Die
Maverhltnisse des Politischen (a completely updated and revised edition Oskar Negt's and Alexander Kluge's
critique of Realpolitik), and Geschichte und Eigensinn. Frankfurt am Main: Zweitausendeins.
Alexander Kluge
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Personal life
His sister, Alexandra Kluge, is a film actress.
References
External links
kluge-alexander.de (http:/ / www. kluge-alexander. de), Alexander Kluge official website
Alexander Kluge (http:/ / www. imdb. com/ name/ nm0460176/ ) at the Internet Movie Database
Alexander Kluge (https:/ / portal.d-nb. de/ opac. htm?query=Woe=118563491& method=simpleSearch) in the
German National Library catalogue
Senses of Cinema: Great Directors Critical Database (http:/ / www.sensesofcinema. com/ 2003/ great-directors/
kluge/ )
Hans-Ulrich Obrist's Interview with Alexander Kluge (http:/ / www.nettime. org/ Lists-Archives/ nettime-l-9802/
msg00000. html)
Kluge-Mller interviews via Cornell University (http:/ / muller-kluge. library. cornell. edu/ de/ index. php)
Lohengrin in Leningrad (http:/ / softtargetsjournal. com/ v21/ alexander_kluge. php) excerpted from Cinema
Stories, featured in SOFT TARGETS v.2.1
http:/ / www. ubu. com/ film/ kluge.html download movies
http:/ / www. suhrkamp. de/ titel/ titel. cfm?bestellnr=41904 download movies
http:/ / www. witz. com. br/ alexanderkluge Complete documentation of pictures and texts from his films (in
Portuguese language)
Alexander Kluge (http:/ / www. isfdb. org/ cgi-bin/ ea. cgi?Alexander_Kluge) at the Internet Speculative Fiction
Database
Article Sources and Contributors
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Article Sources and Contributors
Alexander Kluge Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?oldid=550125221 Contributors: Abtinb, Akluge, Al Lemos, AllyD, Asparagus, Auntieruth55, Buzzlightyear, Carabinieri,
Cicerosilva, Cjs2111, Cyrusc, D6, Dana boomer, Dr pda, Fred Bradstadt, Freshacconci, Frietjes, Frontoffice, Furor Teutonicus, Gogo Dodo, Gothic Cathedral, J R Gainey, Jbonilla 61, Jetman,
Jrk3150, Koavf, LorenzoB, Lugnuts, Magnus Manske, Maximus Rex, Monegasque, Motivationweb, MrOllie, Olessi, Omnipaedista, Philip Cross, Rachel0898, Rich Farmbrough, Ser Amantio di
Nicolao, Sht218, Sindinero, Thejews6969, Tomeasy, Tony1, 26 anonymous edits
Image Sources, Licenses and Contributors
File:Alexander-kluge-2009-ffm-014.jpg Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=File:Alexander-kluge-2009-ffm-014.jpg License: Creative Commons Attribution-Sharealike 3.0
Contributors: Dontworry
License
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