Film and Contemporary Audiovisual Media

This theme group concentrates on the production, aesthetics, reception and impact of film and other contemporary audiovisual screen media. There is a focus on the philosophical, cognitive and phenomenological relation between audiovisual art and its audience, the social, technological and artistic developments in the field, historiographical, epistemological, and ontological questions regarding media objects and practices, and the materiality and medium-specificity of artworks.

Research colloquium

The theme group 'Film and Contemporary Audiovisual Media' (formerly Arts, Medium and Moving Images) hosts a research colloquium, introducing well-known scholars from Film and Media Studies to the academic community in Groningen.

This semester's speakers are:

• 16/09: Christopher Holliday (King’s College London): Imitation of Life: Likeness and ‘Smartness’ in the Digital Replication of Celebrity
• 07/10: Louis Bayman (University of Southampton): Varieties of time in Uncut Gems (2019) and Tár (2022)
• 11/11: Brian Price (University of Toronto): Contradiction or Difference? Assayas and Political Seriousness
• 02/12: Steffen Hven (Filmuniversity Babelsberg, KONRAD WOLF): Cinema’s Diaphanous Atmospheres
• 16/12: Melanie Kreitler (University of Giessen): Book launch: Mental Illness and Narrative Complexity: An Experiential Approach to Puzzle Films and Complex Television

Previous semesters

Spring 2025

• 18/2: Vinzenz Hediger (University of Frankfurt): The Repentant Cinephile Revisited. On the Colonial Antecedents of Modern Film Theory
• 4/3: Viviane Saglier (University of St Andrews): Icon as Infrastructure: Anticolonialism and 1950s Egyptian Cinema
• 18/3: Karl Schoonover (Warwick University): Cinema’s Racialized Vectors of Pollution and the Hygiene Theatrics of “White Safety” Films during Jim Crow
• 13/5: Eliza Steinbock (Maastricht University): Ghosts in My Throat
• 27/5: Mariapaola Pierini (University of Turin): The Acting Coach in Contemporary Italian Cinema

Fall 2024

• 17/9: Manishita Dass (Royal Holloway, London): Dreamscapes: 1950s Bombay Cinema and the Affective Archives of the Left
• 24/9: Sudeep Dasgupta (University of Amsterdam): (Dis)locating the Subject, Moving the Image and Reasoning with History
• 19/11: Daniel Mann (King’s College, London): The Zone: Deserts, Cinema, War
• 3/12: Dan Leberg (University of Groningen): Hollywood Acting, Cognitive History, and the (almost) Lost Story of Aline MacMahon
• 17/12: Pei-Sze Chow (Nanyang Technological University, Singapore): Automating Creativity: AI and Creative Labour in the Audiovisual Industry

Spring 2024

• 5/3: Antonio Somaini (Sorbonne Nouvelle): 'The Visible and the Sayable. On AI, Visual Culture, and the Algorithmic Correlations Between Images and Words'
• 19/3: Sulgi Lie: (Freie Universität Berlin): 'Total TV: From the cinematographic to the televisual subject in Charlie Chaplin’s "A King in New York"
• 23/4: Benoît Turquety (Université Paris 8): 'Operating media: Persistant Im_materialities'
• 14/5: Chloé Galibert-Laîné (American University in Paris): 'Online Exhaustion and the Cinema of Fatigue: To Sleep, Perchance to Dream'
• 28/5: Sergio Rigoletto (University of Groningen): 'The Screen as a Border: Video Art Viewership, Relational Aesthetics and the Queer Refugee'

Fall 2023

• Nikolaus Perneczky (Queen Mary University of London): "Global Film Heritage and the Question of Restitution"
• Book launch Julian Hanich and Martin P. Rossouw (University of Groningen): 'What Film Is Good For: On the Values of Spectatorship'
• Katharina Loew (University of Massachusetts, Boston): 'Speaking in pictures: Composite imagery in silent cinema'
• Blandine Joret (University of Amsterdam): 'Follow-up on the Cinephiles: On the function of film clubs in emancipatory education'
• Giuseppe Fidotta (University of Groningen): 'The Palermo Palimpsest: Tourism and the afterlife of film'

Spring 2023

• Malte Hagener (Philipps University, Marburg): "Towards a Digital Film History: Infrastructure, Method, Scale"
• Laliv Melamed (University of Groningen): Book launch for "Sovereign Intimacy" (with Sara Strandvad & Jennifer Schnepf)
• David Martin-Jones (University of Glasglow): "Floating Heritage: The Cinematic Exploration of Transculturation under Globalization"
• Eugenie Brinkema (MIT): "Drabness and Ethics (on the Values of Formalism)"

Fall 2022

• Anna Backman Rogers (University of Gothenburg): "Picnic at Hanging Rock"
• Guido Kirsten (Filmuniversität Potsdam-Babelsberg): "Studying the Cinema of Precarity (and Beyond): Scenes of 'Social Shame'"
• Annie van den Oever (University of Groningen): "Hands-On! Experimental Media Archaeology in the Field of Film and the Arts"
• Marie-Aude Baronian (University of Amsterdam): "Dressing the Screen: Notes on Textile, Fashion, and Film"
• Pete Porter (Eastern Washington University): "From Marching Penguins to Octopus Teachers: Film and Animal Studies in the New Century"

Spring 2022

• Martine Beugnet (Université de Paris): “The Bigger Picture: On Watching Films on a Cinema Screen.”
• Nikolaus Perneczky (IZK – Institute for Contemporary Art, Technical University Graz): “African Films in European Archives: Moving Image Heritage and the Case for Restitution.” (POSTPONED)
• Landi Raubenheimer (University of Johannesburg): “Nostalgic Dystopia in Popular Media: The Case of Johannesburg after 1994.”
• Catherine Grant (Independent Scholar, UK): “Irresistible Instrumentalism: Studying Music-Making in Cinematic Story Worlds in the Form of the Video Essay”
• Tom Gunning (University of Chicago): “The Cinematic Image: A Radically Novel Form”

Fall 2021

• Ariel Rogers (Northwestern University): “New Immersive Screens: Form and Frame”
• Arved Ashby (Ohio State University): “The Recent Importance of Sound Design Over Film Scoring”
• Guido Kirsten (Filmuniversität Potsdam-Babelsberg): “Studying the Cinema of Precarity” (POSTPONED DUE TO COVID)
• Marie-Aude Baronian (University of Amsterdam): “Dressing the Screen: Notes on Textile, Fashion, and Film” (POSTPONED DUE TO COVID)
• Berenike Jung (University of Groningen): “Mimetic Listening on TikTok’s ‘Attractions’”

Involved researchers

• Susan Aasman
• Jakob Boer (Postdoc)
• Anna Doyle (PhD)
• Sirin Fulya Erensoy
• Giuseppe Fidotta
• Cristina Formenti
• Berber Hagedoorn
• Julian Hanich (chair)
• Miklós Kiss
• Melanie Kreitler
• Dan Leberg
• Sanna McGregor (Independent Scholar)
• Nico Medina (PhD)
• Dana Mustata
• Annie van den Oever
• Lara Perski (PhD)
• Sergio Rigoletto
• Hossein Tavazonizadeh (PhD)
• Steven Willemsen

• Qingling Zhang (PhD)