Our Publication is online!

The publication’s objective is to serve as the documentation of our graduate student symposium held in July 2017. The goal of the symposium was to discuss problems in current film culture with a focus on filmic heritage and innovative projects in the field of film education. Think Film! is a compilation of most of the talks given at the symposium. As quite often conferences or workshops are not documented, the goal of the publication is on  one hand, to preserve the results for other scholars and to make them accessible for the general public, and on the other hand to give the panelists a designated space to present their research. 

The authors discuss questions of film heritage and digitization, funding, film festivals, film museums and local film culture with a focus on the conditions in Germany, Czech Republic and India as well as relate their findings to the changes film and media studies have undergone in recent years.

We thank our partners and supporters, especially our coordinators of the Masters-Programme „Filmkultur: Archivierung, Programmierung, Präsentation“ at the Goethe University Frankfurt and MM, M for the beautiful layout. Our open access publication can be downloaded and is accessible online on zenodo, mediarep and the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek.

For further information on open access publications we highly recommend the project oa books.

Our Programme is online!

ThinkFilM! is a student symposium dedicated to the discussion of problems in current film culture and innovative projects in the field of film communication (for more detailed information see below).

Admission to the Symposium is free, but we request that you register via mail before the 6th of July.

Our Programme is available as a downloadable PDF. Please note that there may still be slight changes: ThinkFilM_Programm_BIS_09-07-17

The Symposium opens Thursday at 6 pm with a curated programme of film clips and shorts that all address questions of reflexivity in film. Saturday is dedicated to Polish film culture, problems of Repertory Cinema, the Impact of European film festivals for Indian Independent Films, Questions of film funding, Ethics of Restoration and the Impact of Digitization on documentary forms. The Saturday programme engages with film education and its current state in Poland and the Czech Republic and in what way Museums and film festivals can be involved. The topics of our last panel are Criticism and Essayism as a possible form of Criticism, proposing the question of why film museums have had to face fundamental criticism considering their raison d´être. The Symposium closes with a Round Table Discussion with Guests.

In the Evening we highly suggest the Programme of our Partners, the Deutsche Filminstitut|Filmmuseum, which shows rare Technicolor Prints accompanied by Lectures and Introductions about Technicolor, early Colouring Methods and Restoration by Céline Ruivo (Cinémathèque Française), Prof. Dr. Ulrich Rüdel (Hochschule für Technik und Wirtschaft Berlin) and Christoph Draxtra (KommKino).

Change of Date!

We have shortened the Symposium!

New time frame: Thursday 13th to Saturday 15th of July!

CfP – Deadline Extended!

We have extended our Deadline!

The rules for submissions are the same, but you have time until the 1. of April to submit your proposal. We are looking forward to it!

Call for Papers – English

[M]obile Medien und digitale Displays [schaffen] in Verbindung mit globalen digitalen Netzwerken die Möglichkeit, Filmbilder, die von überall (oder nirgendwo) stammen, zu jeder Zeit an jedem Ort zu sehen.

(Hediger, Fahle, Sommer 2011: Orte filmischen Wissens)

Film, for decades an analog medium and bound to the stationary of the cinema, today is encountered mostly digital and delocalized: on Netflix, Youtube and other VoD-Platforms, in museums and as a teaching tool in schools, on screens as a DCP, in the context of festivals, multiplex- and program cinemas or in private screenings. This development seems to be the defining element of our time, placing us in an age of “post-cinema”. Thus, this unfolding confronts film communication and archiving with new problems. The popularity of “user generated content”, e.g. Video-Essays, shows furthermore: communicating film is not carried out by a few people or institutions, but by a multitude of different players. Correspondingly, the intentions, concepts and strategies are manifold.

Acknowledging these problems spurred a few attempts through universities in Germany to attend to them which manifested in special study programs: e.g. the Masters-Program “Filmkultur: Archivierung, Programmierung, Präsentatin” at Goethe-University Frankfurt, the Masters-Program “Filmkulturerbe” at the Filmuniversity Babelsberg. Their focus is the described growing complexity of the cinematic landscape. One central question is, among others, how to deal with remote, non-canonized film heritage and how it is or should be archived, made accessible for scholars and the public as well as made part of the valid film history. Taking the excessive production of digital moving images into account, the question arises how institution of film culture should deal or are dealing with this progression and correspondingly the future film heritage.

Call for Papers – Deutsch

[M]obile Medien und digitale Displays [schaffen] in Verbindung mit globalen digitalen Netzwerken die Möglichkeit, Filmbilder, die von überall (oder nirgendwo) stammen, zu  jeder Zeit an jedem Ort zu sehen.
Hediger, Fahle, Sommer 2011:
Orte filmischen Wissens

Film, für Jahrzehnte analog und örtlich an den Kinosaal gebunden, begegnet uns heute hauptsächlich digital und ortsungebunden: auf Netflix, Youtube oder anderen VoD-Plattformen, in Museen und als Lehrmittel in der Schule, auf Leinwänden als DCP, im Rahmen von Festivals, Multiplex- und Programmkinos oder privaten Vorführungen. Diese Entwicklung scheint uns in einem Zeitalter des „post-cinema“ zu platzieren. Zugleich ist es genau diese, die insbesondere die Filmvermittlung und -archivierung vor neuartige Probleme stellt. Die Popularität von „user generated content“, wie etwa Video-Essays, zeigt des Weiteren: Filmvermittlung wird nicht von einigen wenigen betrieben, bestimmt und geleitet, sondern von einer Vielzahl von Institutionen und Personen. Dementsprechend mannigfaltig sind auch die Intentionen, Konzepte und Strategien.

An einigen Universitäten in Deutschland gibt es Bestrebungen, sich speziell dieser zunehmenden Komplexität zu widmen – wie etwa mit dem Studiengang „Filmkultur: Archivierung, Programmierung, Präsentation“ in Frankfurt am Main oder dem „Filmkulturerbe“ Studiengang in Babelsberg. Im Zentrum steht u.a. die Frage, wie mit abseitigem, nicht kanonisiertem Filmerbe umgegangen wird und wie auch dieses Erbe archiviert, zugänglich gemacht und in die geltende Filmgeschichte überführt werden kann. Mit Blick auf das zukünftige Filmerbe, stellt sich zudem die Frage, wie Institutionen der Filmkultur mit der heutigen expansiven Produktion digitaler Bewegtbilder, vor allem im Online-Bereich, umgehen.

Coming Soon!

Hier findet ihr in wenigen Stunden den Call for Papers für das studentische Symposium in Frankfurt am Main.