Alexander Kluge, whose eightieth birthday coincides with the release of this book, is a key figure in the German cultural landscape, having worked prolifically - over some fifty years - as a film-maker, writer and television producer. Outside the German-speaking world, Kluge is best known as one of the founding members of the New German Cinema and as the director of films such as YESTERDAY GIRL (1966), THE PATRIOT (1979) and The POWER OE EMOTION (1983). Film, however, is just one of the mediums with which he has worked throughout the course of his career. In 1962, Kluge published Lebensläufe, the first of several collections of short stories; he is the author (along with Oskar Negt) of a number of key books (including Public Sphere and Experience and Geschichte und Eigensinn); he has written extensively on a diverse range of topics including (among others) film, television, history, politics, opera, literature and the public sphere; and - since the establishment of his own television company DCTP (Development Company for Television Programmes) in 1987 - he has produced thousands of programmes for German television, many of which can now be viewed on DCTP's fascinating Theme park’ website.

As the first English-language sourcebook devoted to Kluge's work, the aim of this collection is to provide the reader with a comprehensive introduction to some of the key issues, themes, preoccupations and ideas driving the development of his groundbreaking film, television and literary productions. Following Thomas Elsaesser's introduction, the book is divided into eight thematically organised sections, the contents of which (as summarised below) contain a broad range of different texts, including: articles and stories by Kluge; critical essays on various aspects of his work; transcripts from some of his television programmes; and interviews with Kluge himself. Each of these texts explore central issues, themes and ideas that feature across Kluge's body of work, and the book as a whole encourages the reader to draw their own connections and associations between material that was produced both in different mediums and at various points in his career.

Kluge himself places great emphasis on fashioning texts (be they films, television programmes, interviews, or stories) that are neither closed nor didactic in their structure and that refrain from channelling the viewer/reader's thinking in a specific conceptual or ideological direction.