Cosmic Miniatures
Cosmic Miniatures
Cosmic Miniatures is a new film by Alexander Kluge that premiered at the International Film Festival Rotterdam in 2024. “Cosmic Miniatures” also refers to a set of related short films by Kluge, only some of which were incorporated into the longer work. Inspired in part by Leslie Adelson’s 2017 book, Cosmic Miniatures and the Future Sense: Alexander Kluge's 21st-Century Literary Experiments in German Culture and Narrative Form, the filmic “Cosmic Miniatures” material traverses great distances in space and time, working in the subjunctive mood to cultivate both alternative futures and alternative pasts. On October 17, 2023, members of the advisory board of Alexander Kluge: Cultural History in Dialogue at Cornell University and the University of Bremen had the opportunity to talk with Alexander Kluge, using seven of the “Cosmic Miniatures” short films as points of departure for a wide-ranging conversation on music, film history, sense perception, the languages of Babel, evolution, war and grief, the sounds of the planets, animal intelligences, transatlantic bridges, astrophysics, and much more besides. Presented in this collection is the video recording of this rich dialogue, the seven shorts discussed in the video, and the 90-minute film Cosmic Miniatures.