Filmmanifest Logo 1

Project "The Film Manifesto"

Project funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG)
Filmmanifest Logo 1
Image: Elias Erkan

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

Funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG)

Principle Investigators: Prof. Dr. Bernhard Groß de, Prof. Dr. Matthias Christen (Uni Bayreuth)External link

Research Collaborators: Tilman Schumacher, M.A. de , Adriane Meusch, M.A. (Uni Bayreuth)External link

Runtime: 2022-2025

 

Against the current backdrop of an increasing number of mostly political manifestos and their various agendas, the DFG-funded research project tries to systematically assess the history, the generic features as well the uses of film manifestos in particular. The research group has started its work in April 2022 and consists of film scholars from Friedrich-Schiller-University and Bayreuth-University.

Coming up at the beginning of the 20th century, film manifestos, it is argued, function as seismographic devices concerning situations of crisis, critically depicting historical ruptures, transitions and potential futures of the medium. As a means of critical (re-)evaluation, film manifestos serve as a tool that helps to reflect and regulate the ratio of elements that determine what film and cinema mean in specific historical conjunctures. The agendas that film manifestos advocate being activist texts, vary greatly. They equally refer to aesthetics, economics, institutional framework as well as to the various public spheres that films address and instigate.

The project presents a broad exploration of this subject – based on hundreds, mostly rather short texts which address diverse issues, ranging from film history to film geography to questions of gender and race, finance and politics. The research project encompasses three mutually dependent subprojects in which four film scholars are involved.

  • Sub-projects

    The subprojects complement each other in terms of methodological approach, thematic focus and historical reach. Subproject 1 (Tilman Schumacher M.A., FSU Jena) addresses, on an intratextual level, the constitutive elements of film manifestos and draws up a historically broad typology of textual forms and functions. Subproject 2 (Adriane Meusch M.A., Bayreuth-University) delivers an in-depth analysis of film manifestos by feminist film collectives that originated transnationally in the 1970s and 80s. Subproject 3 will be led by the two principal investigators and link-up the academic institutions involved (Bayreuth/Jena). It 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.

  • Publications
    • In preparation: Schumacher, Tilman: Das Cinema of Distinction von Lilja Briks „Das Glasauge“ (1928), oder: Der ‚Manifestfilm als Ausdruck einer Krise des Film(-Manifests). In: Matthias Christen/Bernhard Groß (Hg.): Filmmanifeste als Krisenreflexion. Eine Theorie- und Mediengeschichte des Films. 2025.
    • Schumacher, Tilman: Das Filmmanifest und das avantgardistische Projekt. Texteinsätze der historischen sowie Nachkriegs- und Post-Avantgarde im globalen Kontext, in: Globalising the Avant-Garde. 8. Band der Reihe Studien zur europäischen Avantgarde und Moderne. (September 2024: DeGruyter).
    • Meusch, Adriane: Gesten der Solidarität – feministische Filmmanifeste und kollektive Autor*innenschaft, in: Remake. Frankfurter Frauenfilmtage 2023, Frankfurt am Main 2023, S. 65-73.
    • Groß, Bernhard: Manifeste des Wirklichen? Pasolini und die Neoavantgarden der Nachkriegszeit, in Cora Rok (Hg.): Authentizität nach Pasolini, Paderborn 2023, S. 167-186.
  • Conference Talks
    • 23.07.2024: Adriane Meusch & Tilman Schumacher: „The Film Manifesto as an aesthetic-political Intervention”, Tagung „manifesto NOW! Purposes and Effects of an Escalating Form in the US and Beyond”, Dresden 22.-24.07.
    • 04.07.2023: Adriane Meusch: „’Who takes care of our children while we are here?’ – The International Symposium on ‘Women in Cinema’ in St. Vincent, Italy”, HoMER Conference, 4.–7. Juli 2023, Tecno Campus, Mataró, Barcelona.
    • 16.06.2023: Adriane Meusch: „Feminist Film Manifestos in the 1970s and 80s: Aesthetics, Functions, Circulation”, Doing Women´s Film and Television History, 14.–16. Juni 2023, Sussex University, Brighton.
    • 1.9.2022: Tilman Schumacher, „Filmmanifeste – Eine Typologie filmaktivistischer Texte im globalen Kontext“, The EAM Conference – European Network for Avantgarde and Modernism Studies, 1.-3.9.2022 Lisbon.
    • 5.7.2022: Bernhard Groß, "Der Geifer des Autors. Filmende Schriftsteller, Lettristen und ihre Manifeste", cinepoetics-Lectures, Deutsche Kinemathek, Berlin. 
    • 26.06.2019: Matthias Christen: “Film as Manifesto? Jean-Luc Godards Le livre d’image (F 2018)”, Lecture, Friedrich-Schiller-Universität Jena. 
  • Events

    Upcoming events: 

     

    Past events: 

    Workshop: film manifestos, gender and identity.
    6th and 7th June 2024
    Filmhaus Nürnberg

    Workshop: film manifestos and their relationship to aesthetics and politics.
    11th January and 12th January 2024
    FSU Jena

    Guest lecture: On the genealogy of an activist genre.
    29th November 2023, 18:00 c.t. Fürstengraben 18, Seminarraum 
    FSU Jena 
    Guest lecture by Prof. Dr. Benedikt Hjartarson (Universität Reykjavík)

    Internal Workshop: Determination, genealogy and heterogeneity of the film manifesto.
    Do, 30. November 2023
    FSU Jena

    Workshop: film manifestos, geography, geopolitics and economy. 
    19th September and 20th September 2023
    Bayreuth University

    Workshop: film manifestos and technical innovations in film history and the topos of organization of perception
    13th February and 14th February 2023
    FSU Jena