Relocating Filmstrips, Remapping Europe

"Relocating Filmstrips, Remapping Europe" closes a gap in media history by studying, through a transnational perspective, the filmstrip, a series of still images often with an accompanying, scripted commentary projected for the purposes of civic instruction and education across the globe from the mid 1920s to the 1970s. Whether deployed by government, industry, or religious groups, for use in schools, churches, or public spaces, the filmstrip represented a low-cost, resilient alternative to portable film and slide projectors and a significant, if ephemeral, precursor to such contemporary digital formats as PowerPoint and TikTok videos. The project seeks to relocate filmstrips, both across European archives and within media history. Staffed with one PDRA each at the University of St. Andrews and Goethe University Frankfurt, the project has a duration of 33 months and pursues three closely related objectives: 1) We locate filmstrips in a variety of archives and reconstruct their production, distribution and presentation history. We identify existing collections and select items for digitisation in collaboration with our archival partners. 2) In examining, and contextualising, the varied uses of filmstrips across mid-20th century Europe, we develop an interdisciplinary theoretical framework to address questions of popular knowledge and epistemic authority. 3) We secure a future for filmstrips by developing a digitisation and conservation protocol for filmstrips which will be used in this project and can be scaled out and up for future research initiatives. The filmstrip today is largely forgotten, and dismissed as obsolete media, both by the archives that hold these materials and the scholars, educationalists and media practitioners that might use them. This final stage will facilitate a series of workshops with filmmakers, curators and artists in the UK, Germany and with collaborating schools in Africa (UniCam in Accra, Ghana, the National Film Institute in Jos, Nigeria, and the Cimathek in Cairo) to explore further creative and pedagogical uses of the filmstrips beyond the conclusion of the project. The project's academic research will be developed through close collaborations with archives and partner institutions. The research outputs include an international conference, an edited book collection, two peer-reviewed articles and, with the archives, an international workshop, which informs the project's most significant output, a virtual exhibition featuring approximately 250 digitised items. The virtual exhibition is designed for use in secondary and tertiary education and in programs ranging from archival and curatorial studies to history, pedagogy and social science, as well as in curatorial and artistic projects. With its subject matter and approach, the project opens a new chapter in the cooperation between research universities and media archives. The two principal investigators have been at the forefront of closing a historical gap between academic film and media studies and heritage institutions, most notably through research projects with the British Film Institute and the DFF - Deutsches Filminstitut & Filmmuseum, as well as through the creation of archival studies modules and master programs at St. Andrews and Goethe University in Frankfurt. Building on this experience, the project combines the academic valorisation of hitherto neglected collections with the outreach capabilities of heritage institutions to set a template for media research with immediate and long-term scholarly and public impact.