IF 19|20

reality. But it is only the loss of meaning of cinema, which once represented
the commercial horizon of film evaluation, that makes it possible to expose the
conceptual peculiarity of cinema in terms of media history and to distinguish it
from other forms of media events.
Especially experimental, complex, difficult films that dare something new need
cinema in order to be understood. On small screens, viewed casually, they
are lost. The challenge is to keep a cultural practice for the production and
presentation of technical images, which can no longer assert itself economically,
socially present as an alternative perception. Among the arts, there has long
been a crowding-out competition in terms of attention economy as to who fits
better into the current cultural industry. This requires certain places, but also
films that make cinema plausible in the most advanced way, the compulsion
to perceive, to see the world differently: “Being discouraged is not the right
precondition for any work,” wrote Robert Walser in the Micrograms.
Lars Henrik Gass received his doctorate from the Free University of Berlin
and was managing director of the European Documentary Film Institute in
Mülheim an der Ruhr in 1996/97, where he established the book series Texte
zum Dokumentarfilm at Vorwerk 8 publisher. Since 1997 he has been director
of the International Short Film Festival Oberhausen. He has published essays,
reviews, and lectures on film, photography, and cultural and film-political
topics, and has taught on film and cultural management. He is co-editor of the
volumes Provokation der Wirklichkeit. Das Oberhausener Manifest und die Folgen
(2012) and after youtube. Gespräche, Portraits, Texte zum Musikvideo nach dem
Internet (2018) and author of the books Das ortlose Kino. Über Marguerite Duras
(2001), Film and Art after Cinema (2019) and Filmgeschichte als Kinogeschichte.
Eine kleine Theorie des Kinos (2019). He is also a board member of the Federal
Association of Municipal Film Work.