Dr Jiří Anger

Profile

My research lies at the intersection of film and media theory, videographic criticism, and archival practice. In my British Academy Postdoctoral Project (2024–2026), titled “Videographic Archives: Understanding Transitional Audiovisual Objects in the Online Landscape”, I seek to provide tools for conceptualising the status of archival moving images in the rapidly shifting digital dispositif. Videographic criticism, a discipline bordering between film studies, digital humanities, and artistic research, will enable me to combine theory and practice and examine audiovisual objects such as AI-upscaled early films, gimmicky media artefacts from the television past, or appropriated archival footage on VOD platforms through the lens of contemporary user experience with digital interfaces.

I am coming to Queen Mary after finishing my long-term research project on the so-called first Czech films, shot by Jan Kříženecký between 1898 and 1911, and their digitization at the National Film Archive (Národní filmový archiv) in Prague. Having the privilege to combine my PhD research at Charles University (2017–2022) with my professional activities at the NFA, I investigated how the distributed materiality of the digitized early films affects their aesthetic impact and our theoretical notions of cinema in the digital age. The project has brought many individual and institutional outputs, including a DVD / Blu-ray collection, an online edition, a few videographic essays, and various journal articles (The Moving Image, Film-Philosophy, Studies in Eastern European Cinema, Iluminace). For the article “Trembling Meaning: Camera Instability and Gilbert Simondon’s Transduction in Czech Archival Film”, I won the Film-Philosophy Annual Article Award in 2022. Two books resulting from the project will be published soon: a monograph Towards a Film Theory from Below: Archival Film and the Aesthetics of the Crack-Up (Bloomsbury Academic, Thinking Media series, 2024) and an edited volume Digitální Kříženecký: Nový život prvních českých filmů (Národní filmový archiv, 2024), which brings my theory-based research together with my colleagues’ historical and archival examinations of the films’ materiality, circulation, and cataloguing.

In parallel with this project, I spent the last six years investigating the possibilities of videographic criticism in research, teaching, and curatorship. My videographic essays, on which I collaborated with scholars and artists such as Veronika Hanáková, Adéla Kudlová, and Jiří Žák, were published in journals such as NECSUS, [in]Transition, Iluminace, or Tecmerín. Four of them received mentions in the annual Sight & Sound Best Video Essays polls (2022, 2023), and the essay Distant Journey through the Desktop (with Jiří Žák) was shortlisted for the Screen Audiovisual Essay Film Award in 2023. I taught modules and workshops on videographic criticism at universities in Prague, Brno, and Olomouc and presented my works at numerous international conferences (London, Montréal, Boston, Lucerne, Udine, Bucharest, Tallinn, etc.). I also initiated platforms for curating and popularizing videographic research for journals Filmový přehled and Film a doba.

In case you want to discuss videographic criticism, film and media theory, and archival practice, do not hesitate to contact me. I also welcome any ideas for collaboration with the institutions I am involved with in the Czech Republic: the National Film Archive (Národní filmový archiv) and the Czech peer-reviewed journal Iluminace.

Research

Research Interests:

• Film and Media Theory
• Film and Media Philosophy
• Archival Theory and Practice
• Videographic Criticism
• Digital Media
• Found Footage
• Essay Film
• Early Cinema

Publications

Monographs

Anger, Jiří. Towards a Film Theory from Below: Archival Film and the Aesthetics of the Crack-Up (New York: Bloomsbury Academic, 2024). [forthcoming]

Anger, Jiří. Afekt, výraz, performance: Proměny melodramatického excesu v kinematografii těla [Affect, Expression, Performance: Transformation of Melodramatic Excess in the Cinema of the Body] (Praha: Filozofická fakulta UK, 2018).

Edited Volumes

Anger, Jiří, ed. Digitální Kříženecký: Nový život prvních českých filmů [Digital Kříženecký: The New Life of the First Czech Films] (Praha: Národní filmový archiv, 2024). [forthcoming]

Anger, Jiří, and Sandra Baborovská, eds. Myslet filmem / Thinking Through Film (Praha: Galerie hlavního města Prahy, 2023).

Česálková, Lucie, and Jiří Anger, eds. Special Issue “Interface,” Iluminace 32, no. 2 (2020).

Selected Articles

Hanáková, Veronika, Martin Tremčinský, and Jiří Anger. “Cycles of Labour: In the Metaverse, We Will Be Housewives,” NECSUS: European Journal of Media Studies 12, no. 2 (2023): https://necsus-ejms.org/cycles-of-labour-in-the-metaverse-we-will-be-housewives/. [videographic essay]

Anger, Jiří, and Kevin B. Lee. “Suture Goes Meta: Desktop Documentary and its Narrativization of Screen-Mediated Experience,” Quarterly Review of Film and Video vol. 40, no. 5 (2023): 595–622.

Anger, Jiří, and Veronika Hanáková. “Screen Stars Dictionary: Natalia Oreiro,” Tecmerín: Revista de Ensayos Audiovisuales, no. 11 (2023): https://tecmerin.uc3m.es/project/screen-stars-dictionary/. [videographic essay]

Anger, Jiří, and Veronika Hanáková. “Once Upon a Screen: The Clown, the Tree, the Shadows,” [in]Transition: Journal of Videographic Film & Moving Image Studies 9, no. 3 (2022): https://mediacommons.org/intransition/clown-tree-shadows. [videographic essay]

Anger, Jiří, and Miroslava Papežová. “Kdo se otáčí za Slunečnicí?: Nostalgický konstrukt hvězdného obrazu Inky Zemánkové [Who’s Looking Back at the Sunflower? The Nostalgic Construction of Inka Zemánková’s Star Image],” Iluminace 34, no. 3 (2022): 25–68. [article + videographic essay]

Anger, Jiří. “Do Archivists Dream of Electric Horses?: Digital Kříženecký, Static Electricity, and the Quadruple Logic of Indexicality,” Studies in Eastern European Cinema 13, no. 1 (2022): 90–111.

Anger, Jiří. “Shaping the Unshapeable?: Videographic Curation of Early Czech Cinema,” Iluminace 34, no. 1 (2022): 9–29. [article + videographic essay]

Anger, Jiří. “Trembling Meaning: Camera Instability and Gilbert Simondon’s Transduction in Czech Archival Film,” Film-Philosophy 25, no. 1 (2021): 18–41.

Anger, Jiří, and Jiří Žák. “Distant Journey Through the Desktop,” [in]Transition: Journal of Videographic Film & Moving Image Studies 8, no. 1 (2021): https://mediacommons.org/intransition/distant-journey-through-desktop. [videographic essay]

Anger, Jiří. “Keep That Image Burning: Digital Kříženecký, Color Veil, and the Cinema That Never Stops Ending,” The Moving Image: The Journal of the Association of Moving Image Archivists 20, nos. 1–2 (2020): 123–155.

Anger, Jiří. “(Un)Frozen Expressions: Melodramatic Moment, Affective Interval, and the Transformative Powers of Experimental Cinema,” NECSUS: European Journal of Media Studies 8, no. 2 (2019): 25–47.

Anger, Jiří. “Found footage efekt: Digitální Kříženecký a prasklina filmového média [Found Footage Effect: Digital Kříženecký and the Crack-up of the Film Medium],” Iluminace 31, no. 2 (2019): 89–117.

Anger, Jiří, and Tomáš Jirsa. “We Never Took Deconstruction Seriously Enough (On Affects, Formalism, and Film Theory). An Interview with Eugenie Brinkema,” Iluminace 31, no. 1 (2019): 65–85.

Anger, Jiří. “Médium, které myslí sebe sama: Audiovizuální esej jako nástroj bádání a vyústění akademických trendů [Thinking Through the Medium Itself: Audiovisual Essay as a Research Method and a Result of Academic Trends],” Iluminace 30, no. 1 (2018): 5–26.

Anger, Jiří. “Co dokáže trpící tělo?: Melodramatický afekt a Smrt Marie Malibranové [What Can a Suffering Body Do?: Melodramatic Affect and The Death of Maria Malibran],” Iluminace 28, no. 1 (2016): 87–105.

Book Chapters

Anger, Jiří. “První políčka českého filmu: Videografický přístup k raným kinematografickým artefaktům [The First Frames of Czech Cinema: A Videographic Approach to Early Cinematic Artifacts],” in Digitální Kříženecký: Nový život prvních českých filmů [Digital Kříženecký: The New Life of the First Czech Films] (Praha: Národní filmový archiv, 2024), 212–235. [forthcoming]

Anger, Jiří. “Estetika praskliny: Filmy Jana Kříženeckého na pomezí figurativna a materiálna [Aesthetics of the Crack-Up: The Films of Jan Kříženecký Between Figuration and Materiality],” in Digitální Kříženecký: Nový život prvních českých filmů [Digital Kříženecký: The New Life of the First Czech Films] (Praha: Národní filmový archiv, 2024), 40–75. [forthcoming]

Anger, Jiří. “Úvod: Digitální návrat k nejranějším českým snímkům [Introduction: Digital Return to the Earliest Czech Films],” in Digitální Kříženecký: Nový život prvních českých filmů [Digital Kříženecký: The New Life of the First Czech Films] (Praha: Národní filmový archiv, 2024), 22–37. [forthcoming]

Anger, Jiří. “Druhý život montáže v (post)digitální realitě / The Second Life of Montage in the (Post)Digital Reality,” in Myslet filmem / Thinking Through Film, eds. Jiří Anger and Sandra Baborovská (Praha: Galerie hlavního města Prahy, 2023), 117–137.

Anger, Jiří, and Sandra Baborovská. “Předmluva / Preface,” in Myslet filmem / Thinking Through Film, eds. Jiří Anger and Sandra Baborovská (Praha: Galerie hlavního města Prahy, 2023), 9–14.

Anger, Jiří. “Dotýkat se nedosažitelného objektu: Haptická audiovizuální esej a antropotechnický interface [Touching the Unattainable Object: Haptic Audiovisual Essay and the Anthropotechnical Interface],” in Operátoři (nových) médií, eds. Tomáš Dvořák and Martin Charvát (Praha: NAMU, 2022), 235–270.