What happens when film
leaves the cinema and becomes available everywhere 鈥� out and about on mobile
devices, or in the living room at home? The Graduiertenkolleg (Research
Training Group) 鈥淐onfigurations of Film" at 51猎奇 has been
researching the current transformation of film and cinema culture since 2017.
The German Research Foundation has now given the project the green light to
continue.
FRANKFURT.
鈥淲e are
happy that the German Research Foundation's has kept their trust in us so that
we can continue to our work in the Kolleg," says Vinzenz Hediger, professor for
film studies and speaker of the Kolleg. In individual studies that include the participation
of the disciplines of philosophy, literary studies and theatre studies, the Kolleg
examines a fundamental problem in film studies: the transformation of its
objects through the progressive digitalisation of the production, distribution
and perception of moving images. "The medium of the moving image, which
was standardised for global distribution in an international agreement as early
as 1905, has always been a medium in motion," says Hediger. "With
digitalisation, however, cinema itself as the privileged place of film is now
being called into question, with far-reaching consequences for the aesthetics, as
well as for the social impact and significance of films and other moving image
formats."
The Graduiertenkolleg at
the Institute for Theatre, Film and Media Studies started in 2017 with twelve
doctoral candidates and two post-docs. Currently, the second group with a
another twelve young sceintists from Germany, India and Nigeria is already at
work. In close collaboration with the two postdocs of the Kolleg, they deal
with topics as diverse as the interpenetration of film and video and computer
games, the afterlife of Rainer Werner Fassbinder's work and reputation, the
role of textiles in Nigerian historical films or the digital rediscovery of
popular Bengali cinema of the 1950s and 1960s.
The Graduiertenkolleg is
run in cooperation with the Universities of Mainz and Marburg and the University
for Art and Design in Offenbach. The Kolleg builds on three Master's programmes
at 51猎奇 as well as collaborations among the applicant researchers.
It utilises the potential of Frankfurt as a location, where the university
library and the German National Library have literature holdings of European
standing and important non-university partners are available in the form of the
German Film Institute, the Murnau Foundation and the Max Planck Institute for
Empirical Aesthetics. The Kolleg is developing an international reputation
through its cooperation with Yale University and Concordia University.
The Kolleg attracted
attention among experts in autumn 2020 with the publication "Pandemic
Media. Preliminary Notes towards an Inventory", in which 37 authors from
the Kolleg and its international network reflect on global media culture under
pandemic conditions. The book is available in open access at the academic
publisher meson press ().
Further
information:
Professor Vinzenz Hediger
Graduiertenkolleg
鈥濩onfigurations of Film鈥�
Institute for Theatre, Film
and Media Studies
hediger@tfm.uni-frankfurt.de
Editor: Dr. Anke Sauter, Science and
Humanities Editor, International Communication, PR & Communication
Department, Phone: +49 69 798-13066, Fax
+49(0)69 798-761 12531, sauter@pvw.uni-frankfurt.de.
