This bibliography has been compiled as part of the research for Film Undone. In addition to writings on beginning and (not) finishing, it also contains approaches to the unmade, unfinished, and discarded in cinema and other disciplines, as well as to paracinematic practices. By no means exhaustive, it may provide initial points of access and inspiration for future research into cinematographic labor whose results have not materialized on a screen.
Agamben, Giorgio. ‘What Is the Act of Creation?’ In The Fire and the Tale. Redwood City: Stanford University Press, 2017. 33–56.
Aventurin, Annabelle, and Léa Morin. ‘Non Aligned Film Archives’. Non-Fiction 03, The Living Journal (2021)
↗Beard, Thomas, ed. The Unfinished Film. New York: Gladstone Gallery, 2011.
Beeston, Alix, and Stefan Solomon, eds. Incomplete: The Feminist Possibilities of the Unfinished Film. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2023.
Biehl, João Guilherme, and Peter Andrew Locke, eds. Unfinished: The Anthropology of Becoming. Durham: Duke University Press, 2017.
Bošković, Aleksandar. ‘Who Is Shooting Over There: Slobodan Šijan’s Fanzine Film Leaflet (1976–79)’. Post. Notes on Art in a Global Context, 28 November 2018.
↗Bruno, Giuliana. Streetwalking on a Ruined Map. Princeton; Oxford: Princeton University Press, 1992.
Bullot, Érik. ‘Film en moins – Filmlessness’. Maison d’art Bernard Anthonioz de Nogent-sur-Marne, 2012.
——. ‘De la conférence comme film’. Décadrages 21–22 (2012): 27–37.
——, ed. Film Papier. Bourges; Angoulême; Poitiers: École nationale supérieure d’art de Bourges; École européenne supérieure de l’image Angoulême & Poitiers, 2013.
——. ‘On Performative Cinema - On the Films of Roland Sabatier’. Garage Cosmos, 2014.
↗Campany, David. ‘Cinema on the Page’. Aperture, 15 August 2017.
↗Carse, Ashley, and David Kneas. ‘Unbuilt and Unfinished’. Environment and Society 10/1 (2019): 9–28.
Deleuze, Gilles. ‘What Is the Creative Act?’ In Two Regimes of Madness: Texts and Interviews 1975-1995, edited by David Lapoujade. Los Angeles, CA : Cambridge, Mass: Semiotext(e) , 2006. 312–24.
Farocki, Harun. On the History of Labour. Document, Material, Commentary. Edited by Volker Pantenburg. HaFI 013. Berlin: Harun Farocki Institut; Motto Books, 2020.
Fenwick, James, Kieran Foster, and David Eldridge, eds. Shadow Cinema: The Historical and Production Contexts of Unmade Films. New York: Bloomsbury Academic, 2020.
Fenwick, James. Unproduction Studies and the American Film Industry. London: Routledge, 2021.
Field, Allyson Nadia. ‘The Archive of Absence: A Manifesto for Looking at Lost Film’ In Uplift Cinema: The Emergence of African American Film and the Possibility of Black Modernity. Durham ; London: Duke University Press, 2015. 23–28.
Harle, Matthew. Afterlives of Abandoned Work: Creative Debris in the Archive. New York: Bloomsbury Academic, 2019.
Hsu, Fang-Tze. ‘Giving Time: George Clark’s Double Ghosts and the Alter-Politics of Film’. Berwick Film and Media Art Festival Catalogue, 2019, n.p.
↗Janicot, Christian, ed. Anthologie du cinéma invisible: 100 scénarios pour 100 ans de cinéma. Paris: Jean-Michel Place; Arte éditions, 1995.
Keller, Sarah. Maya Deren: Incomplete Control. New York: Columbia University Press, 2015.
Kirkland, Katie. ‘In Search of Lost Time: Theresa Hak Kyung Cha’s Cinematic Imagination’. Another Gaze: A Feminist Film Journal, 5 November 2021.
↗Kunze, Peter C. ‘Herding Cats; or, The Possibilities of Unproduction Studies’. The Velvet Light Trap 80 (2017): 18–31.
Lenssen, Claudia. ‘Liste des Unverfilmten’. In Bestandsaufnahme: Utopie Film, edited by Alexander Kluge. Hamburg: Zweitausendeins, 1983. 240–56.
Levi, Pavle. ‘Cinema by Other Means’. October 131 (January 2010): 51– 68.
——. Cinema by Other Means. Oxford ; New York: Oxford University Press, 2012.
Marker, Chris. Commentaires 1. Paris: Seuil, 1961. Translated to German as Kommentare 1. Berlin: Brinkmann & Bose, 2014.
——. Commentaires 2. Paris: Seuil, 1967. Translated to German as Kommentare 2. Berlin: Brinkmann & Bose, 2014.
Moholy-Nagy, László. Malerei, Fotografie, Film. München: Albert Langen, 1927. Translated to English as Painting, Photography, and Film. Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press, 1969.
Morin, Léa. ‘Restore, Recompose, Reconstitute, Reinvent’. A*Desk, 1 August 2022.
↗Najd Ahmadi, Tara. ‘Unfinished: Art, Film, and Revolution in Iran, 1979’. University of Rochester, 2019.
——. ‘Archive of Incomplete’. Frontiers - A Journal of Women Studies 41/1a (2020).
↗——. ‘The Incomplete: Film, Politics, and Remembering the Past’. In Counter-Memories in Iranian Cinema, edited by Matthias Wittmann and Ute Holl. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2021. 21–30.
Orlow, Uriel. Unmade Film. Edited by Andrea Thal. Zürich: Fink, 2014
Otolith Group, The. A Long Time Between Suns. Edited by Anna Colin and Emily Pethick. London: Sternberg Press, 2009.
Pantenburg, Volker. ‘Unmade Films’. In In the Maze of Media, edited by André Rottmann. Bielefeld: Transcript, forthcoming. n.p.
Resnais, Alain, and Jorge Semprún. Repérages. Paris: Chêne, 1974.
Rosenfeld, Elske. Harun Farocki: Hard Selling. Reframed by Elske Rosenfeld. Edited by Doreen Mende. HaFI 014. Berlin: Harun Farocki Institut; Motto Books, 2021.
Siagian, Bunga. ‘The Disappearing Decade : Agency of Leftist Subject in Indonesian Film History’. Asian Film Archive, 11 January 2021.
↗Vogman, Elena. ‘Dance of Values: Reading Eisenstein’s Capital’. Grey Room 72 (2018): 94–124.
——. Dance of Values: Sergei Eisenstein’s Capital Project. Zürich: Diaphanes, 2019.
Vučićević, Branko. Paper Movies. Belgrade; Zagreb: B92; Arkzin, 1998.
——. ‘Serbian Cutting: Excerpts from the Book Paper Movies’. Studies in Eastern European Cinema 5/1 (2 January 2014): 85–89.
Walley, Jonathan. ‘The Material of Film and the Idea of Cinema: Contrasting Practices in Sixties and Seventies Avant-Garde Film’. October 10 (2003): 15–30.
Wenders, Wim. ‘A History of Imaginary Films. Letter to the Editors of Cahiers Du Cinéma’. In The Logic of Images: Essays and Conversations, edited by Michael Hofmann. London: Faber and Faber, 1992. 86–88.