Writing Film History
Cinephilia and Canonization

 

In this context, the writing of film histories should be understood as a multi-voiced construction process that goes well beyond the “written”. It includes not only the two areas mentioned above – archive/museum work and historical research -, but also film criticism, artistic film practice as “new historiography”, film (history) on television and DVD, official and unofficial traditions of cinephilia, film reconstruction, etc. Common to all of these fields and practices is that they cannot avoid the process of canonization.

 

Lecturers at the conference include Kevin Brownlow, Roger M. Buergel, Elisabeth Büttner, Paolo Cherchi Usai, Thomas Elsaesser, Martina Kudlacek, Michael Loebenstein, Olaf Möller, Christine Noll Brinckmann, Michael Omasta, Jonathan Rosenbaum and Janet Staiger.

 

In addition to lectures and panel discussions, various films will be presented in the course of the conference, such as rare examples brought to light through film historians' and archivists‘ work. On April 2, a special event will see the conference move to an outside location: the so-called "Narrenturm" ("lunatics' tower") on the grounds of the former General Hospital in Vienna. Here, the filmmaker and historian Eric de Kuyper will highlight the emergence of cinema in the context of late 19th century culture and society.