Postwar: The Films of Daniel Eisenberg

Postwar: The Films of Daniel Eisenberg presents the major films of filmmaker Daniel Eisenberg: Displaced Person, 1981, Cooperation of Parts, 1987, Persistence, 1997, and Something More Than Night, 2003, through newly commissioned essays by five highly respected writers of contemporary film and media art. This book represents the first survey of Eisenberg’s work, placing it in the context of contemporary theory and experimental media practice.

As in the work of Claude Lanzmann, Harun Farocki and Alexander Kluge, history is the ground for investigation and experimentation for Eisenberg. The concept of postwar” finds form in each of his films, differently in each one.

The book also serves as a matrix for a new photo project by Daniel Eisenberg, specifically designed for this book, drawn from stills from the films, images of source material, ephemera and the filmmaker’s own collection.

Each contributor has focused his or her contribution on a specific film. In a playful and unconventional way the book will mirror the ways in which these films bring image and text into direct encounter with the physical experience of history, and how his poetic texts creates a dialogue with images. This book offers Eisenberg’s dense and critically rich films to a wide audience of filmmakers, scholars and students of history, art and media.

The book coincides with a newly published DVD of Eisenberg’s films.