Coming Attractions

​Coming Attractions and the construction of its images are woven around the idea that there is a deep, underlying relationship between early cinema and avant-garde film. Tom Gunning was among the first to describe and investigate this notion in a systematic and methodical manner in his well known and often quoted essay: An Unseen Energy Swallows Space: The Space in Early Film and Its Relation to American Avant-Garde Film (in: John L. Fell [ed.], Film Before Griffith, Berkeley 1983). Coming Attractions additionally addresses Gunning's concept of a Cinema of Attractions. This term is used to describe a completely different relation between actor, camera and audience to be found in early cinema in general, as compared to the modern cinema which developed after 1910, gradually leading to the narrative technique of D. W. Griffith. (…) The impetus for Coming Attractions was to bring the three together: commercials, early cinema, and avant-garde film. (P. T.)