Res4Film–Rescue | Restore | Respect | Research

• Applicant: Katja Krause
• Subject Area: Theatre and Media Studies
• Term: since 2025
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 554969360

The Res4Film project aims to explore the legal framework conditions for making student film productions from the Film University Babelsberg and its predecessor institutions available to academia as open as possible while at the same time protecting their rights. Based on a selected research corpus of about 20 films, the following areas of work will be in the foreground: 1. legal frameworks and creative possibilities with a special focus on ancillary copyrights and 3. presentation systems and rights management. The corpus will cover the period from the founding of the university in 1954 to the time of reunification. Representative film works from this period, originally available in analog 16mm and 35mm film formats on various photochemical materials, which have already been digitized through the Film Heritage funding program or through in-house projects, will be examined for their legal conditions and contexts of origin. A legal opinion prepared by iRights will clarify the fundamental questions of whether and when digitized film works can be made openly accessible for scholarly use and what requirements the publication platform must meet. In addition to the areas of work described in the pilot, the selected films will be catalogued in depth. To this end, the indexing standards FIAF Moving Image Cataloging Manual and Cinematographic Works Standard EN 15907 and EN 15744, as well as the bibliographic standards Functional Requirements for Bibliographic Records (FRBR) and Resource Description and Access (RDA) will be analyzed with regard to local characteristics and the specifics of digital derivatives. A guideline will be developed to serve as a resource for other institutions, describing in practical terms the steps required to make film works openly accessible. Basic copyright principles as well as more specific issues - such as post-licensing, music sharing, the handling of personal rights, or the possible standardization of rights descriptions for the work and the associated metadata - will be developed and published in the form of a practical how-to handout. The guide can serve as the basis for a future DFG-Praxisregel zur „Digitalisierung von Bewegtbild“ and provide valuable preliminary work in this area.

• DFG Programme: Cataloguing and Digitisation (Scientific Library Services and Information Systems)
• Co-Investigator: Professor Dr. Christoph Wahl