A winner of the Golden Lion at Venice, Kluge was a committed pacifist and one of the last living torchbearers of the Frankfurt school of neo-Marxist cultural criticism
Alexander Kluge, a German film-maker and author who elevated cinematic collages into an art form and won the top prize at the Venice film festival in 1968, has died aged 94, his publisher has announced.
A former assistant of expressionist master Fritz Lang, Kluge was an accomplished director of intellectually rewarding, if at times oblique filmic essays, and an ever-productive writer of short fiction.
He also played a key role in organising the rule-breaking New German Cinema movement that brought forth better-known auteurs such as Rainer Werner Fassbinder and Werner Herzog, and he continued to bring experimental film to the small screen in his later years.
Along with the philosopher Jürgen Habermas, who died earlier this month aged 96, Kluge was one of the last living torchbearers of the Frankfurt school of neo-Marxist cultural criticism.
