Includes bibliographical references and index.

What is film theory from below? -- Keep that image burning : The color veil and the cinema that never stops ending -- Do archivists dream of electric horses?Static electricity and the quadruple logic of indexicality -- Trembling meaning : Camera instability and transduction in archival moving images -- The milestone that never happened : The scratched kiss and the failed beginning of Czech cinema -- Touching the film object with surgical gloves : Frankensteinian frames and the fragile malleability of cinematic faces -- Shaping the unshapeable?Videographic deformation and the first frames of czech cinema.

"This book explores the weird shapes that emerge when material elements interact with figurative content of the moving image. Employing the digitized first Czech films by Jan Kríženecký prompted the questions: is it possible to do film theory from below, from the perspective of a film object? Could we treat accidents in moving images as full-fledged actors with distinctive aesthetic forms and functions? In these films, analog elements impinge upon the form and content of the moving images to create generative figures and shapes. Using digital technology, we can isolate these features and experiment with how they can be reimagined"--