This book 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.
Daniele Dottorini examines the cinematic form as a specific way of working with the temporality of the image through a confrontation with the history of both the image and the discourses that have reflected on it, particularly within the contemporary sphere. The image is always, he argues, in a sense spectral, phantasmal, and open – it is a field of tensions which has the unique ability to form connections to other images, epochs, gazes, and visions of the past. 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.