Towards a Film Theory from Below takes the films of Jan Kríženecký as starting points for a series of dazzling close readings and deep revelations about the afterlives of film artifacts and the figurative effects of moving-image material. Anger commits to a radical kind of method and a profoundly small scale. Each chapter moves from just a film frame or two-just one strange and specific detail-to consider what difference the idiosyncratic or errant trace might make. Anger's own work on the digitization of Kríženecký's films-his deep understanding of the particulate matter of these images and the processes that contributed to their digital re-circulation-position him among a crucial community of archivist-scholars who are capable of reorienting our understanding of film matter and its contingent figurations.

Katherine Groo, Associate Professor, Lafayette College, USA

Jiri Anger's intriguing question about what it would mean to do film theory “from below” resonates with recent interventions in “new materialism” and related strands of theory, but it does so with a specificity that is sometimes lacking in those fields-and with clearer relevance to questions of the relation between human sensation and the technologically modulated material environments in which we live. In short, Anger's question-and his detailed answer to it-has far-reaching philosophical significance that goes beyond traditional issues in film studies to implicate the very role of the human in a rapidly changing ecological and ultimately cosmological context.

Shane Denson, Associate Professor of Film & Media Studies, Stanford University, USA

The breadth of theoretical knowledge and the agility of perspectives employed in this book are impressive … Though the book's main undertaking is in the field of film theory, its handle on the material specificities that characterize film will inform debates in aesthetics and humanistic study.

Millennium Film Journal

Towards a Film Theory from Below is a freewheeling, mind-bending, ravenously curious piece of theoria.

Found Footage Magazine

Highly engaging and carefully argued … The book's thorough and engaging theoretical reflection is an eye-opener that offers a completely refreshing take on film archiving … Hopefully this highly original proposition will be picked up by film archivists and scholars alike.

The Journal of Film Preservation

A provocative and engaging book. Anger examines film studies' hierarchies, arguing for a reconsideration of approach. The result is a work at once focused on the micro, but equally allowing for a broader mapping onto wider theories of film.

British Association of Film, Television and Screen Studies (BAFTSS) Awards Panel