Transdisciplinary Networks of Media Knowledge: Educational and Research Films at the Intersection of Art, Visual Anthropology, and Film Studies in the US from the 1950s to the 1970s

• Applicant: Privatdozent Dr. Henning Engelke
• Subject Area: Theatre and Media Studies ; Art History
• Term: since 2017
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 356848724

This project considers the little studied interrelations between research and educational films with documentary and experimental film cultures in the US from the 1950s to the 1970s. It looks into the intersections of academic research on alterity and media knowledge in the disciplines of visual anthropology, communication science and film and media studies with uses of film in social work, political activism, experimental film aesthetics and the filmic representation of minorities. The focus is on three interrelated aspects:- participatory filmmaking in film pedagogy and visual anthropology- media apparatuses of filmic microanalysis of body motion interaction- the media ecological implications of "acoustic space"The three areas open up complementary media historical and science historical perspectives. The focus on media participation reveals how film theory and visual anthropology were entangled in contexts of film pedagogy, communications research, the social politics of the „War on Poverty“, media activism, and policies of the civil rights movement. The focus on microanalysis demonstrates how practice theoretical methods and procedures of film analysis shaped epstemological and aesthetic conceptions of film. The third focus traces how the media ecological concept of acoustic space traveled from ethnographic research into media studies and then into experimental film, expanded arts and film pedagogy.Considered together, the three areas open up a perspective on networks of media knowledge in the US during the 1950s to 1970s that reveals how empirical and theoretical research on media, communication, and cognition was entangled in social practices and political processes as well as technological and aesthetic developments. The project thus contributes to research on cinematic epistemologies, media archeologies, and aesthetic knowledge. At the same time it reveals the importance of nontheatrical modes of filmmaking for the formation of the disciplines of film and media studies, and visual anthropology.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants