In cooperation with and sponsored by: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft; Department of Media Studies, Trier University; Haus des Dokumentarfilms,Stuttgart; Bundesarchiv-Filmarchiv, Berlin

Background

Historical films are part of the visual heritage of the 20th century. Yet,these films are hardly accessible for research and teaching purposes, since they are stored in only a few archives, where viewing must be done on-site. While feature films are available on video or through television broadcasts,docu-mentary films can rarely be accessed this way. On the other hand, the necessity to consult audiovisual sources has increased in the wake of the "pictorial turn," brought about in the 1990s, in the fields of media studies, sociology, political stud-ies, ethnology, literature, history, art history and, last but not east, journalism.

As it is foreseeable that the digital media, which have made tremendous progress within the past three years, will shortly take the place of the video tape, it is to be expected that these technological developments will bring about new possibilities for the accumulation and mediation of knowledge. These new opportunities of digi-tal film images have not been fully explored with regard to their scholarly and didactical uses yet. Scholarly editions of films on digital media will call for high theo-retical and historical standards. Our conference will provide a forum for respective discussions.

Goals of the Conference

The conference will approach questions of how digital editions of films can be de-signed and how theoretical and historical information can be linked up with visual content. It will bring together scholars experienced in full-text digitalization, and it will put into perspective the future development of digital audiovisual libraries and mediatheques. Since the objective of the conference does not yet exist outside a few pilot projects with various ambitions, we will discuss methodological problems of content, design and technological practices of film editions. Most of the participants are experienced in the digital presentations of films and contextual material. We wish to address scholars from relevant projects at universities, film archives and libraries as well as academics of relevant disciplines, television providers and insti-tutes for continuous education, both from Germany and abroad.

Contributions from abroad will include papers read by Jan-Christopher Horak (Hollywood Entertainment Museum), Nico de Klerk (Nederlands Filmmuseum) and David Shepard (Criterion Films), Stephan Dolezel (IWF, Goettingen), Laura Bezerra (Deutsches Filminstitut, Frankfurt am Main), Andrea Zapp (University of Salford, Dept of Visual Arts) .