Mario Pfeifer's book A Formal Film is a critical reader that is part of his film project of the same name--an innovative expansion of the genre. The complex exploration of the intercultural, film-historic, political and urban issues that are discussed in Pfeifer's film not only surface on the level of texts, they also become manifest in the materiality of the book itself and its production process. The artist's book was produced in Mumbai and created using six different local printing techniques. In March 2012 Mario Pfeifer and designer Markus Weisbeck set out the formal aspects of the publication in collaboration with local manufacturers and the authors of the texts.