Research in Film and History: New Approaches, Debates and Projects

Based on certain aesthetics and audiovisual strategies, documentaries, feature films, home movies, television programs and web videos influence our ideas of history. They all generate historical narratives and the resulting ideas of how things might once have been. Sometimes, however, previous certainties are called into question or even a counter-history is modeled.

The conference serves to take stock of and discuss current approaches, debates and projects in interdisciplinary research on the thematic field of film and history. It also serves as a forum for exchange between scholars from Germany, Estonia, France, Great Britain, Mexico, the Netherlands, Austria and Switzerland who specialize in film and media studies and history. This will also include approaches from related media and communication studies.

The event will be introduced by a talk with Thomas Elsaesser, who will present and discuss his documentary DIE SONNENINSEL (2017). In her keynote, Erica Carter will draw connections between film distribution in the dispersed territories of the late British Empire and Rancière’s “division of the sensual”. The panels will in turn deal with historical dimensions of film archives and the collection of films, with questions about the relationship between film aesthetics and trauma, with the archaeology of audiovisual icons, with perspectives on curating, reception and participation, and with the visualization of the Holocaust on the basis of liberation footage. In addition, the panels offer a forum for current research projects on multimedia installations, collaborative and interactive research and the aesthetic operations of the documentary.

The aim of the event is to relate and discuss the different theoretical and methodological approaches to film and history and to sharpen concepts and categories. The Bremen conference attempts to form a point of intersection between the disciplines of film studies and historical studies, focusing on debates about how films create history and historical knowledge visually and aurally and how they model historical memory.

A productive methodological and epistemological exchange can be expected for both disciplines, which will be further deepened by the founding of the English-language open access journal “Research in Film and History”.

Bremen, 28th – 30th November 2018

The Bremen Conference seeks to explore a point of intersection between the disciplines of film studies and history, paying particular attention to new approaches to this interdisciplinary field.

28th November
(City 46 / Kommunalkino Bremen)

08:00 pm Opening and Screening: The Sun Island (GER 2017)

09:30 pm Discussion with Prof. Dr. Thomas Elsaesser (University of Amsterdam, Netherlands / Columbia University School of Arts, USA)

29th November
(Star Inn Hotel, Bremen)

09:00 am Panel 1: Archives and Archiving

Dr. Judith Bihr (Curator, ZKM / Centre for Media and Art, Karlsruhe, Germany):
The Archive as Artistic Practice in Experimental Films from the Middle East

Dr. María Rosa Gudiño (Universidad Pedagógica Nacional, México):
Public Health, Memory and Culture. The richness of a Film Archive. Mexico, 1950-1960

Liis Jõhvik M.A. (Tallinn University, Finnland):
Reel Life: Memory and Gender in Soviet Home Movies and Amateur films

11:00 am Panel 2: Trauma and Postwar Aesthetics

Prof. Dr. Bernhard Groß (Universität Jena, Germany):
Staging Community. Italian and German Postwar Cinema aesthetics

Dr. Michael B. Elm (Research fellow FU Berlin, Germany / Tel Aviv University, Israel / Goethe Universität Frankfurt a.M., Germany):
Cinematic Patterns of staging Trauma in Centenary Productions of the Great War

Sergej Gordon M.A. (KU Eichstätt Ingolstadt, Germany):
Screen memories – the unmaking of revolutionary trauma in the Mexican comedia ranchera

12:30 pm Presentation: open access journal “Research in Film and History”
film-history.org
Dr. Rasmus Greiner

02:30 pm Panel 3: Archaeology of Audiovisual Icons

Dipl. Soz. Fabian Schmidt M.A. (Filmuniversität Babelsberg, Germany):
The Westerbork material – Footage or Film?

Prof. Dr. Chris Wahl (Filmuniversität Babelsberg, Germany):
Riefenstahl’s TRIUMPH OF THE WILL (1935) – Versions, Quotations, Recontextualizations

Alexander Zöller M.A. (Filmuniversität Babelsberg, Germany):
The 1942 Warsaw Ghetto Footage – A Cautionary Tale of Contextualization

04:30 pm Panel 4: Projects and new Approaches

Sebastian Köthe M.A. (Research Assistant, Graduiertenkolleg Das Wissen der Künste; Universität der Künste Berlin, Germany):
From Document to Documentary. On Transforming Secret Service CCTV into You Don’t Like The Truth.

Chantal Riekel M.A. (University of the Creative Arts, UK):
Experiencing histories? Visualising personal narratives and history through the Harald Bratt film archive.

06:00 pm Keynote: Prof. Dr. Erica Carter (King’s College London, UK)

08:00 pm Conference Dinner (Edel Weiss Bremen)

30th November
(Star Inn Hotel, Bremen)

9:00 am Panel 5: Curation, Reception, Participation

Dr. Sarah-Mai Dang (Philipps-Universität Marburg, Germany):
The audio-visual art of curating: how practices of selecting, structuring, and exhibiting shape our understanding of history

Dr. Julian Hanich (University of Groningen, Netherlands):
The Abruptly Altered Horizon: On a (Not so Rare) Phenomenon in Historical Reception Studies

Marian Petraitis M.A. (Universität Zürich, Switzerland):
Be Part of History Documentary Film and Mass Participation in the Age of YouTube

11:00 am Presentation: EU Horizon 2020 “Liberation Footage and Digital Approaches”

Michael Loebenstein (Director Österreichisches Filmmuseum Wien, Austria):
New approaches to ‘Digital Curation’ between the archive, the museum, and the arts

Dr. Irina Tcherneva (Associate researcher, CERCEC Paris, France):
Establishing the historicity of new visual archives of the Second World War: civilian victims in the Soviet film-makers focus

Dr. Ulrike Weckel (Justus-Liebig-Universität, Gießen, Germany):
Liberated on Film: Images and Narratives of Camp Liberation in Historical Footage and Feature Films

Dr. Ingo Zechner (Head of Ludwig Boltzmann Institut für Geschichte und Gesellschaft, Wien, Austria):
Smooth Transitions where there are none. Liberation Footage and the Holocaust

02:30 pm Perspectives: Interactive Film as Research Method

Prof. Dr. Winfried Pauleit (Universität Bremen, Germany), Prof. Dr. Delia González de Reufels (Universität Bremen, Germany), Dr. Stefano Odorico (Leeds Trinity University), Michael Loebenstein, Dr. Ingo Zechner

Contact: Rasmus Greiner film-history[at]uni-bremen.de

Download the program here.