Introduction. Avant-Garde, Advertising and the Managing of Multiplicity Chapter 1. Absolute Advertising: Abstraction and Figuration in Ruttmann's Animated Product Advertisements (1922-1927) * Introduction * Absolute Film and the Psychophysical Image: Ruttmann's Opus Films * Advertising Psychology and the Uses of Abstraction * From Abstraction to Figuration: Ruttmann's Animated Advertisements in Context * Riding the Curve of Modernity's Information Flows * Conclusion: Avant-Garde and the Governance of Perception Chapter 2. The Cross Section: Images of the World and Contingency Management in Ruttmann's Montage Films of the late 1920s (1927-1929) * Introduction * Montage and the Ordering of the Archive * From Science to Statistics: The Cross Section and Mass Society * The Cross Section and the Photographic Archive in Weimar Visual Culture * Ruttmann and the Filmic Cross-Section: Berlin. Die Sinfonie der Großstadt * Melodie der Welt and the Ordering of the World * Conclusion: Avant-Garde Between Statistical Order and the Spark of Chance Chapter 3. Statistics and Biopolitics: Conceiving the National Body in Ruttmann's Hygiene Films (1930-1933) * Introduction * Applied Statistics and the Hygiene Film * Managing the Masses: Feind im Blut * Picturing the "Volkskörper": Blut und Boden * Conclusion: The Malleability of the Avant-Garde Chapter 4. "Überall Stahl": Forming the New Nation in Ruttmann's Steel and Armament Films (1935-1940) * Introduction * The Continuity of Germanic Production: Metall des Himmels (1934) * The Surface of Nazi Design: Mannesmann (1937) * Mobilizing the Steel Body in Wartime: Deutsche Panzer (1941) * Conclusion: Molding the Masses Conclusion. Of Good and Bad Objects.