Conference: A Century of Filmkritik and Beyond

A CENTURY OF FILMKRITIK & BEYOND

An Interdisciplinary Conference
Dartmouth College, April 13-16, 2017

ORGANIZED BY
GERD GEMÜNDEN (DARTMOUTH COLLEGE)
&
NOAH ISENBERG (THE NEW SCHOOL)

 

For more than a century—dating as far back as 1907, when the first German-language film publications were first established—Filmkritik(criticism, historiography, all manner of cultural discourse on cinema) has been a prized form of expression, a thriving intellectual, journalistic, and professional enterprise.

At the start more limited in scope, it quickly blossomed during the years of the Wilhelmine and Habsburg Empires, through the interwar and postwar periods, and up to the first decades of the twenty-first century. During its extended course, it has faced numerous challenges: the political rifts of the twentieth century (including the Third Reich and the East-West divide); the technological shifts of the medium and the modes of writing about it (from silent to sound pictures, print to digital); the exigencies of archival initiatives and preservation.

At the same time, from its beginnings, German-language film criticism has been a relentlessly international affair, frequently undoing national borders and transcending the limits of language and origin. Moreover, it has persistently crossed the Atlantic—not only due to the migration of prominent critics and filmmakers themselves, but to the receptive audiences and readerships on both sides.

Highlighting this transatlantic dimension of film criticism, our conference brings to Dartmouth a group of highly respected scholars, archivists, curators, print and online journalists, bloggers, and other advocates of film criticism from Germany, Austria, the United Kingdom and the United States.

All events are free and open to the public.

For further information, go to http://www.acenturyoffilmkritik.com/