We are delighted to announce the launch of a major 33 month project (2025-2027), funded by the AHRC and DFG. “Relocating Filmstrips, Remapping Europe,” is a collaborative project between University of St Andrews (led by Professor Tom Rice) and Goethe University Frankfurt (led by Professor Vinzenz Hediger).
The Filmstrip, which comprised a series of still images often with an accompanying, scripted commentary or audio recording, is a now-obsolete and critically-neglected media form that was extensively used across, and beyond, Europe in the mid-20th century. Whether deployed by government, industry, or religious groups, for use in schools, churches, or public and private 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. ‘Relocating Filmstrips, Remapping Europe’ seeks to relocate filmstrips, both across a variety of European archives and within media history.
The project’s research will be developed through close collaborations with archives and partner institutions, including the National Library of Scotland, Museum of English Rural Life (University of Reading), and DFF – Deutsches Filminstitut & Filmmuseum. The project will support an extensive range of events, creative outputs and publications, including an international conference, an edited book collection, and, with the archives, an international workshop. This will also inform the project’s final output, a virtual exhibition, featuring a selection of digitised items.
The project’s core team comprises:
Professor Tom Rice (Co-I, University of St Andrews)
Professor Vinzenz Hediger (Co-I, Goethe University Frankfurt)
Dr Anushrut Ramakrishnan Agrwaal (Postdoctoral Research Fellow, University of St Andrews)
Johannes Praetorius-Rhein (Research Fellow, Goethe University Frankfurt)