Research Film
On researchfilm.net we examine how historical research films can be accessed, contextualized, and reactivated under the conditions of digital media. We combine archival and provenance research with experimental media practice and reflective interface design to develop publication formats that investigate how digital tools can themselves function as scholarly methods.
By research films, we refer to a genre of moving images produced by researchers for researchers, typically not intended for cinema screening and often subsumed under categories such as non-theatrical and useful film. They were produced to act as visual evidence, support theories, or collect the world on film. However, they were also used to popularize science, to justify political ideas and racial hierarchies, or to create aesthetic experiences. Today, these films can serve scholars, artists, and educators as a means for researching and writing (visual) histories.
In our projects, we address a range of epistemic, technical, legal and ethical questions that have become increasingly urgent with the widespread digitization and online availability of film collections:
- How can visual sources be combined with traditional academic formats, balancing screen-based media with the still vital medium of the book?
- How can large-scale film collections be examined and integrated into historical narratives?
- How should sensitive visual material or historical legacies be handled and how can films produced in violent contexts be restituted?
- How can the different persons involved in or affected by these films be identified, and how can their perspectives be integrated?
- How can audiovisual archival sources help to critically dissect extractivist histories of science and reimagine relational futures?
Projects
Challenging Collections: Remediating Archival Logics
Tracing Provenance: Towards Multivocal Film Histories
Following Visual Legacies: Visualizing a Film's Biography
Research Tools
As part of ongoing research film projects, we often develop smaller specialized tools that help in the study and data preparation of digital film files. Some of these are available below as web tools or for download on GitHub.
Video Layouter
Create visual timelines of a video from frame snapshots and export as image for film analysis, version comparisons, or manual annotations.
Timecode Converter
Convert video timecodes between seconds and frames, based on a given number of frames per second.
researchfilm.net is the collective research practice of
Sarine Waltenspül (University of Lucerne, University of Basel)
Mario Schulze (University of Basel, University of Lucerne)
Moritz Greiner-Petter (Basel Academy of Art and Design, University of Lucerne)
Funding & Support
Our work has been supported by the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF), HERMES (Humanities Education in Research, Data, and Methods), Swiss Federal Department of Foreign Affairs, Museum Tinguely Basel, University of Lucerne & University of Basel.
