Cinepoetics – Center for Advanced Film Studies

The program of the Kolleg-Forschergruppe Cinepoetics – Poetologien audiovisueller Bilder started in October 2015. It is  based at the Freie Universität Berlin, in cooperation with Filmuniversität Babelsberg KONRAD WOLF.

Cinepoetics focuses on the assumption that cinematic images shape the spatio-temporal parameters and schemata of perception, thus creating new frames for cognitive and semiotic processes.

We proceed from the fundamental idea that media technologies are not merely means to communicate given sets of facts. Instead they are technological extensions of our perception that alter the a priori conditions of comprehension, judgment and imagination. This topos is universally acknowledged but still contradicted by the majority of research on film and other audiovisual media, which only takes the represented facts into account when talking about the discourse of cinematic images. It is our goal, to research cinematic images as a genuine form of discourse.

For this purpose, the topos of cinematic thinking will be developed as a theory of the poiesis of film-viewing. This theory will provide the basis for a methodological approach to the analysis of cinematic discourse as well as for the reconstruction of the history of audiovisual movement-images as a history of unceasingly new poetologies of thinking in cinematic images.

The centerpieces of the Kolleg-Forschergruppe are the research projects of the directors, the PhD and post-doctoral projects as well as an international fellowship program and the close exchange with associated researchers.

Directors

Prof. Dr. Hermann Kappelhoff - Freie Universität Berlin

Prof. Dr. Michael Wedel - Filmuniversität Babelsberg KONRAD WOLF