Science on the Film Strip: Collecting, Preserving, and Archiving Research and Educational Films

This session seeks to look at the role of research- and educational films as material documents. The interest of the contributors lies in defining the epistemic significance of science films, that were used for either educational or research purposes within the natural sciences and how they found their way into the archives. Since its foundation, cinematography has been understood as a medium to categorize, systematize and also historicize things. This has been especially true for scientific films, that for example, served to document and analyze human and animal motion or medical practices, such as surgical operations on patients. While some film collection addressed merely researchers, others were produced exclusively for didactic contexts. Almost always when examining the significance of those films, questions of collecting, preserving, archiving and digitizing them come in place. Very often, producers intended to conserve all captured film material for the purpose for later re-editions, but very rarely, this was put into practice. In many cases, films were accompanied by written material which was not always preserved but without which the films are hardly understandable today. More questions evolve when the haptic film material is transferred to digital formats: How to preserve these films for a long period and how to render them accessible for the future? How can these films still be used today? While encompassing films of all regions of the world, the contributors focus on cultural comparisons between East and West Germany before 1989, and Austria after 1918.