Aiming at a long-overdue reappraisal of Dore O.'s avant-garde film practice this publication
honors the work and legacy of Dore O. one of Germany's most pioneering experimental
filmmakers.Figures of Absence exposes the formal rigor and inventiveness as well as the
cultural connotations and historical ramifications of a cinematic vision that has been
relegated to the purely personal diaristic and even nonintellectual realms. Ultimately the
authors' revisionist accounts of Dore O.'s films spark a debate on still underrepresented areas
of women's experimental cinema its dismissive reception across international borders its
legacy and the history and causes of its marginalization.In the 1960s the painter Dore O.
became one of the first and few women in Germany to turn to experimental film in such a
consistent and self-determined way. She was actively involved in exploring new forms of cinema
while developing her own signature her own tone her own film method (Harun Farocki).
Radically following her own path she laid the groundwork for a later generation of notably
female artists by cultivating personal filmmaking in a strong intersection with medium-specific
experimentation while defying highly politicized currents and prevailing theories both
structural and feminist.With previously unpublished archival material and rare interviews with
Dore O. extensive image material as well as new contributions from the leading scholars and
experts on women's experimental cinema from Europe and North America including Albert Alcoz
Ute Aurand Robin Blaetz Christine Noll Brinckmann Stephen Broomer Vera Dika Mike Hoolboom
Sarah Keller Anthony Moore Lucy Reynolds and Maureen Turim among others.
