The Film Manifesto. History, Aesthetics, and Mediality of an Activist Form

• Applicants: Professor Dr. Matthias Christen; Professor Dr. Bernhard Groß
• Subject Area: Theatre and Media Studies
• Term: since 2022
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 464983019

Against the backdrop of a currently steeply increasing number of mainly political manifestos and their various agendas, the research project tries to assess systematically the history, the generic features as well as the uses of film manifestos in particular. Since the early 20th century when they first came up, film manifestos, it will be argued, indicate, as a seismographic device, the rupture, transitions and phases that one way or the other prove to be critical for the film and its history. As a means of critical (re-)evaluation, film manifestos help contemplating and regulating the ratio of the elements that make up what film and cinema mean in a specific historical conjuncture. The agendas whose implementation film manifestos advocate as activist texts, vary greatly. They equally refer to film’s aesthetics and economics, to the institutional framework as well as to the kind of public sphere that films address and instigate. Based on about four hundred, mostly rather short texts, the project tries to establish a film manifesto research that is founded in film studies. Since the texts address a broad array of issues, ranging from film history to film geography to questions of gender and race, finance and politics, the methodological approaches will, in turn, have to diversify accordingly. The research proposal, thus, encompasses three mutually dependent subprojects that complement each other in terms of methodological approach, thematic focus and historical reach. The subproject 1 addresses, on a intratextual level, the constitutive elements of film manifestos and draws up a historically broad typology of textual forms and functions. Subproject 2, instead, delivers an in-depth analysis of film manifestos by feminist film collectives that originate transnationally in the 1970s and 80s. While subproject 1 is based mainly on close readings of texts, subproject 2 broadens the scope, based on a historically specific inventory of manifestos, to include their cultural, discursive and institutional contexts. Subproject 3 will be led by the two principal investigators and link-up the academic institutions involved (Bayreuth/Jena). It, too, provides an overarching frame of reference for the subprojects 1 and 2, in that it undertakes the collaborative endeavor to (re-)write the history of film manifestos as a media-history of film. In this broad perspective, film manifestos will be read as an ongoing effort in crisis management that tries to recalibrate what film is supposed to mean under the given and future circumstances.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants