Times of Distance. Researching and Transmitting Film and Media History under/against Covid-19

The recent shift from studying and teaching to online procedures under the influence of the Corona crisis presented all participants with a variety of challenges. What began in the spring of 2020 as real experiments at universities and schools around the world occupies the newly created free space of the social state of emergency with processes of hardware, software and platforms. This change continues to this day: as a multitude of interface processes and effects. Observing and discussing them poses a challenge of its own. Under this main umbrella, the Film and Media Heritage section, during a online one-day workshop, would like to stress some issues and topics related the modalities of production and transmission historical knowledge at the time of distance. Every form of historical research and historiography has always meant to deal with several and contradictory temporalities and distances (Ginzburg); with temporal and spatial vectors and carriers in terms of separation and gaps from the historical phenomenons investigated; with stratifications and grammatizations of the documentary traces on which the historical research is based (Derrida, Foucault), and finally with technologies and interfaces which mediate the relationship between the historian and the scientific and cultural dissemination of historical knowledge (Chun, Winthrop-Young).

During the Workshop, the organizers would like to discuss and develop further the above mentioned main ideas along three directions: a) archives/festival: the relationships, engagement rules and practices established and developed between film archives and festivals (film history and film heritage-centered) according to the Covid-19 paradigm; b) digital interfaces: the programmatic conditions (i.e. based on programmability and realizing programs), materialities, and effects of moving teaching and learning to online procedures; c) heritage education: how to deal with the concept of materiality and to tackle with the archival practices in a training and teaching context when the social distancing prevent any experimental, hands-on approach to the archival artefacts? Could the historical, metaphorical and operational concept of “distance” highlight and reveal some limits and fallacies behind the current approaches to the representations and histories of film and media materialities?

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cinefest – International Festival of German Film Heritage is an annual on-site festival in Hamburg (Germany) combined with the International Film History Conference. Usually parts of the festival program later move through several European cities (including Filmforum in Gorizia). Apart from exploring new and forgotten areas of film history, the festival provides a prominent showcase for archives which preserve and restore the treasures of German or German related Cinema. The aim is also to create a forum for academics, students, archivists, technicians and film buffs to exchange information and discuss new developments. As everywhere the 2020 edition has been different. The organization of cinefest and conference have been challenged by the worldwide Pandemic. During the Workshop we (the organizing team of cinefest) would like to discuss the pros and cons of translating an analog based event into the digital space, as well as emphasize how the pandemic situation has influenced the presentation and discussion of film heritage.

Outsourcing the procedures of studying, teaching and research to online platforms in reaction to the COVID-19 pandemic has meant and still means a change that can be understood as large set of experimental arrangements (Rheinberger). Interfaces play a decisive role in these experiments: interfaces between hardware and software, which put computers and their network and platform processes into action, as well as user interfaces, which bring people into contact with them and convey what this can be: video conferences. In this context, the lecture is dedicated to the software/platform “Zoom” and asks about levels and effects of interface processes. Far from being mere instruments or channels, platforms like “Zoom” constitute and shape new forms of (not only) academic encounter and exchange.

At present, neither students, teachers nor scholars can enjoy a sensory or hands-on experience of cinematic material culture. At the same time, the distancing restrictions have boosted the use of many devices, such as document cameras, displays, live recordings, collaborative networks, common repositories, etc. Paradoxically, teaching archival practices and historical artefacts at a distance has opened a great deal of opportunities.  

Hence, I would like to deal with the relationship between materiality, historical distance and the representation of archive artefacts. To do so, I will outline this relationship following three different and entangled frameworks: the first is historical, the second is educational, and the third combines a constructivist and media-archaeological approach.