The Mind-Game Film: Distributed Agency, Time Travel, and Productive Pathology

Thomas Elsaesser

This posthumous volume The Mind-Game Film is the outcome of an epic life. Many
of us played a role and had a part in Thomas’s global, playful, and adventurous
journey; at the same time this didn’t come lightly. The rigor of his thinking, his
constant meditation and observation of the world, from individuals to society, the
arts, and the political sphere, his incisive analysis and counter-analysis didn’t allow his
interlocutor to take things with indifference or distraction. One couldn’t get ‘offfocus’ when Thomas started a conversation because he encompassed multiple angles
and contradictory arguments, which required our minds to be at play or in ‘game
mode,’ always focused on experimenting with thoughts while acutely observing and
analyzing the changes in our contemporary environment.