Impact case study database
The German Screen Studies Network: Igniting Insight, Reconfiguring Film Culture
1. Summary of the impact
King’s College London (KCL) research exploring German-language film and film theory has shaped public understanding by establishing a public engagement network (the German Screen Studies Network: GSSN) involving a live cinema programme and dedicated digital platforms that contextualise lesser-known and non-mainstream films and filmmakers for Anglophone audiences. The project has effected change in UK Anglo-German film culture by creating new public humanities infrastructure structured around interconnected cinematic contact zones. Practitioners and audiences have benefited from the co-creation of cross-cultural knowledge and understanding; intercultural community has been generated through the curated cinema event as shared public experience; and school and university student skills training and public education have secured sustainability for future initiatives in participatory intercultural learning through film.
2. Underpinning research
The impact derives from a body of research by two senior scholars working across the interrelated disciplinary fields of German Cultural Studies and Film Studies. The research achieves its most comprehensive synthesis in the German Cinema Book [1]. First published by the British Film Institute (BFI) as a standard work of German film scholarship in 2002, the volume was updated, significantly expanded and conceptually refined by Carter and her co-editors in a 2020 second edition whose KCL contributions include Carter’s new co-authored introduction, her two new chapters and two shorter case studies, and Brady’s contribution on the East German DEFA studio documentarist Helke Misselwitz.
Outputs 2–6 show King’s research combining further overviews of German-language film theories and methodologies [1a,3,6] with studies of specific movements and tendencies. Brady’s research on “the Brechtian tradition of political modernist filmmaking” [4 p.324] centres on engagements with issues in German history and political aesthetics by film auteurs including Wim Wenders, Michael Haneke (for whom Brady also translates and interprets), and Jean-Marie Straub and Danièle Huillet. The latter are the focus of Outputs 5 and 6, and ground Brady’s “significant input” into a major Straub–Huillet retrospective in 2019 [Hobein, B.2]. Brady’s perspectives on Misselwitz as a DEFA woman filmmaker [1 pp.303–304] are complemented by Carter’s feminist analyses of work by West German and post-unification women filmmakers including several hosted in the context of the case study (e.g. Helke Sander, Margarethe von Trotta, Ulrike Ottinger, Mo Asumang [1a,1b]).
Framing King’s research on these and other areas including documentary film, DEFA (Brady), and stars, popular genres and postcolonial film (Carter) are four theoretical insights that lend distinctive shape to the impacts claimed below. In writing on questions of transnational circulation [1b,2], exile and migration [3,6], intermedial translation and adaptation [3,4,6], Carter and Brady have developed, first, a conception of German cinema as an entity forged in a context of internal cultural diversity and transnational cultural traffic. Refined in an externally funded GSSN research project (2018–20) – Circulating Cinema. The Moving Image Archive as Anglo-German Contact Zone – this understanding of film cultures as entities whose sustainability demands a refusal of “the container logic of national culture” [1c p.5] is concretised in the GSSN itself as a cross-border network engaging partners across the UK, Germany, Austria and the African continent. The GSSN programme mix of live cinema with virtual encounters on digital platforms embodies, meanwhile, a second key research insight. Outputs 1, 2 and 4 offer re-figurings from a Film Studies perspective of concepts from modern language studies (the “contact zone” [2]), the sociology of science (“boundary objects” [2]) and performance studies (“liveness” [4]). Carter and Brady use this interdisciplinary framework to critique understandings of media experience as inferior to the “hic et nunc” of live performance [4]. The alternative view realised in both the research and the GSSN programme is of the public film screening as a live event in which the film as ‘boundary object’ mediates relationships across cultural divides, while the screening venue becomes an intercultural ‘contact zone’ in which public conversations enable participatory knowledge production and shared meanings and experiences.
This stress on the collective production of knowledge and experience reflects two further findings from the underpinning research. Carter, first, identifies in Balázs’s film theory an emphasis on cosmopolitan community and intersubjectivity [3 pp.51 & 62] that shapes the GSSN approach to live cinema as an occasion for cross-cultural hospitality and transnational networking. While Brady similarly notes the “joy” of public conversations that wrest shared meaning from often difficult films [5], his research more centrally emphasises the cognitive and critical functions of films that ignite “political insight” through estrangement devices ( Verfremdungseffekte) including slow pacing, genre collage and disjunctive montage. The case study’s successful operationalising of these research insights is evident in testimonials that identify Carter and Brady’s “informative and engaging introductions, lectures, study days, and … other collaborative activities” as contributions that “sustain and deepen understanding”, enable “sharing of perspective”, prompt understanding “of film culture in general”, and may “inspire … further learning and occasionally film making practice” [B.3,B.4].
3. References to the research
Bergfelder, T., Carter, E., Göktürk, D. & Sandberg, C. (Eds) (2020). The German Cinema Book (2nd edition). London: BFI. a) E. Carter & C. Sandberg, Feminism and Women’s Cinema, pp.386–406; b) E. Carter, Transnational Stars: Dietrich, Knef, Schneider, pp.126–138; c) E. Carter et al, Introduction, pp.1–12; d) E. Carter, Stars, pp.90–94; e) E. Carter, Theory, Memory, Counter-Cinema, pp.338–341. Submitted to REF 2021.
Carter, E. (2019). Contact Zones and Boundary Objects. The Media and Entangled Representations of Gender. In F. Brühöfener, K. Hagemann & D. Harsch (Eds). Gendering Post-1945 German History: Entanglements (pp.67–92). Oxford & New York: Berghahn. https://www.berghahnbooks.com/title/BruehoefenerGendering. Can be supplied on request.
Carter, E. (2014). The Visible Woman in and against Béla Balázs. In M. Hagener (Ed.). The Emergence of Film Culture. Knowledge Production, Institution Building and the Fate of the Avant-Garde in Europe, 1919-1945 (pp.46–71) . Oxford & New York: Berghahn. https://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/kcl/detail.action?docID=17077953.
Brady, M. (2019). Technology, Liveness, and Presence in Straub–Huillet’s Film of Schoenberg’s Von heute auf morgen. Opera Quarterly, 34(4), 324–342. DOI:10.1093/oq/kbz004.
Brady, M. (2016). ‘The Attitude of Smoking and Observing’: Slow Film and Politics in the Cinema of Jean-Marie Straub and Danièle Huillet. In T. De Luca & N. Jorge (Eds). Slow Cinema (pp.71–84). Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.
Brady, M. (2006). Bertolt Brecht and Film. In P. Thomson & G. Sacks (Eds). Cambridge Companion to Brecht (pp.297–317). Cambridge: CUP.
Indicators of quality
Output 1: peer reviewed, described by an anonymous reviewer as a “truly admirable achievement of rethinking and reworking” and a “milestone” in German film studies.
Output 2: commissioned by the editor and peer reviewed.
Output 3: commissioned by the editor and peer reviewed.
Output 4: peer-reviewed interdisciplinary contribution to a music studies journal.
Output 5: peer-reviewed chapter.
Output 6: peer-reviewed chapter in standard reference work.
4. Details of the impact
The global dominance of moving image cultures confronts screen studies scholars with a responsibility to contribute to public debate on the societal and cultural impact of audio-visual media. UK German screen studies has however struggled to find such a public voice. Issues facing the subdiscipline included throughout the early 2000s the absence of a national research platform from which to launch co-ordinated public engagement; “substantial ongoing declines” in the teaching of German at school and higher education level (Teresa Tinsley (2019). Language Trends 2019. London: British Council); and exceptionally low awareness of German-language film among UK publics: thus 2014–19 BFI statistics show European film market share diminishing from 4.9% to 1.1%, while German-language titles comprised only 0.1% of 2015 foreign-language market share, and had disappeared entirely as a distinct statistical category by 2019.
In 2013, Carter and Brady founded the GSSN as a means to address these multiple deficits. Impact has since been achieved in four areas grounded in King’s research.
1. Building sustainable infrastructure
The network has effected change in UK film culture by establishing sustainable infrastructure for engagement between academic and non-academic audiences across Anglo-German divides. Pilot collaborations in 2014–16 with the British Museum and Goethe-Institut ( Germany: Memories of a Nation), the German Embassy and Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) (Katja Riemann) and BFI Flare/London Cinema Museum ( Mädchen in Uniform) functioned as proof-of-concept initiatives demonstrating the network’s potential to embody Carter’s conception of the film-cultural contact zone [A.2]. The network has since established a robust multipolar infrastructure with multiple nodes of Anglo-German film-cultural engagement. The GSSN’s hub-and-spoke organisational model involves a core academic management team, a 13-strong steering committee, project advisory groups, and GSSN subgroups within relevant subject associations and networks (British Association of Film, Television and Screen Studies, Association for German Studies, the German Embassy-supported Think German network [A.6]). Carter and Brady have also fashioned a substantial UK and international partnership portfolio, with partners and collaborators including the Goethe-Institut (15 collaborations); BFI (14); Austrian Cultural Forum (ACF) (8); Birkbeck Institute for the Moving Image (BIMI) (8); Institute of Contemporary Arts (ICA) (6); Arsenal – Institute for Film and Video Art, Berlin (5); HOME Manchester (3); German Embassy (2); and, as emerging partners, the Pears Institute for the Study of Antisemitism (1); Nigerian Film Corporation (1); and Sudan Film Factory (1).
Connecting participant organisations to stakeholders and audiences is a digital infrastructure including a website developed in 2016 by King’s Digital Lab, curated by Carter, and hosted jointly by KCL and the Free University of Berlin [A.1]. The website promotes events while disseminating in-house research, including via a GSSN Vimeo channel and carefully targeted social media feeds [E]. Communication across these and other platforms – DVD editions (BFI, Arrow Films, Arsenal); TV (Discovery Channel); YouTube, SoundCloud, etc. (Tate Modern, BIMI, Ciné Lumière, Albertinum Dresden); news media and film journalism ( Sight and Sound, The Guardian, Senses of Cinema, EuropeNow: [A.4]) – has cemented for the GSSN a reputation for excellence and a public identity that is centrally indebted to King’s research.
Over a seven-year period, 77% of GSSN events involved Carter and/or Brady as lead or co-organisers, moderators, lecturers and/or panel speakers. Reaching an estimated total live audience of c5,700 with 75 public events, including two three-day symposia, an invitation-only UK government event (FCO) and core contributions to seven retrospectives or mini-series, the GSSN programme has been shaped around King’s research themes including women’s and queer cinema (15 events); auteur film (16); modernist and political cinema (11); early film (9); German and German-Jewish history and memory (5); colonial and Black film (8); migration and exile (3); and contemporary film (5 events and 3 symposia). Curators, programmers, archivists and educators keen to “take the outcomes of … research beyond the university campus and to stir a wider discussion around German film culture” (Hobein [B.2]) have sought out Carter and Brady for their “world-class expertise” (Baranowska [B.3]) and “wide-ranging, in-depth knowledge” (Deriaz [B.1]). Both have attracted audience and partner accolades for their “brilliant” and “interesting and informed presentation(s)” (curator [C.2,2]; audience member, Cinema Museum [C.3,1]), “excellent” Q&As (distributor [C.2,3]) and “enrich(ing)” presence (Nigeria Film Corporation executive [C.2,2]). Repeat invitations from core partners have lent durability to the network, and deepened research impact by sustaining dialogue among “a group of people that comes and continues to come … I’ve been following things in London for ten years now and I haven’t seen this happen many times” (Straub–Huillet curator [C.4]).
2. Co-creating knowledge and understanding
Event feedback (see [C.1] for quotes unless otherwise indicated) highlights as a second key impact the co-creation of knowledge and understanding – a process fostered both in the moment of the live event, and in the educational or film-cultural practice it later prompts. GSSN social media feeds – “a model of how to use social media effectively to share news and research to academic and non-aca audiences” (Silent London [C.2,2]) – afford insight into the GSSN audience mix, with Twitter followers comprising 33% academics and students alongside a 41% proportion of writers, journalists, film practitioners and non-higher education language professionals [E.2]. Live audience composition fluctuates according to venue – so while events at Tate Liverpool, HOME Manchester or the Halifax Square Chapel Arts Centre draw regional audiences, national film musuems including the BFI, Cinema Museum or German Film Museum (Frankfurt) attract specialist groups with early cinema interests, or international participants seeking new collaborations (“… good things are going to come out of our conversation about the … colonial film archives of Nigeria”: archivist, National Film, Video and Sound Archive, Nigeria [C.2,2]).
Partner programmers have stressed the role of GSSN talks in attracting an “important … young demographic” (Clarke, [D.1]; also Deriaz [B.1]); audiences meanwhile declare themselves “curious” or “fascinat(ed)”; they seek the “unusual” or “rare” film, the “quality” conversation, the chance to “get inspired”. Audience members bring prior interests in German cinema, language, culture and history; contemporary politics (Brexit, antisemitism); social, cultural or family (often German-Jewish) history; and arthouse or counter-cinema (“a rare opportunity for both the films and the discussion”). They find space for new thinking in the “excellent mix … of panels, lectures, presentations and screenings”; they consolidate existing competences (“keeping my German alive”), strengthen understanding (“broadened my horizon”) and acquire new insight (“completely changed my attitude towards archives”; “took observers from zero to a position of knowledge”). Impacts multiply when participants are moved to change future practice by planning “to shoot a 16mm film”, engage in future learning (“prompted me to look up more of their films and read, e.g. Kafka and Barthes”), or change curricula and reshape cultural programmes (“may include some of the films in my programme”; “hoping to pass on ideas to A-level students”, “now planning a further honours module”; or, from a prominent film actor [C.2,3]: “we could talk [with students] about scripts, what was the initial idea, how was it realised”).
3. Creating cross-cultural community
GSSN events are further shown by participant feedback [C.1] to ignite new senses of cross-cultural community grounded in shared enjoyment, experience and memory. Comments stress as a core benefit of Carter and Brady’s “fantastically curated/organised and managed” events, the expansion of access they afford to otherwise invisible or neglected films as well as to German-language and cultural knowledge. “Thought-provoking introductions” and other contextualising material are a means “to keep interest in German alive in UK educational establishments”; GSSN events cultivate a “relaxed … open atmosphere” which is “inviting for beginners and experts”; they address desires to connect to the “broader German community” , and meet that desire through networking opportunities (“I had the chance to show my film and get into an exchange … with filmmakers … academics, professionals, archivists”). Events have drawn on King’s research [1,4,5,6] to reactivate shared memory: presentations on German-Jewish film culture recall family histories – “my father’s family were German Jewish refugees”; “with family coming from Austria/Vienna [Stadt ohne Juden] has given me some insights in my family” – or stimulate dialogue in intimate contexts (“[Die Geträumten] may well impact on friendship with Austrian old friends, as discussion point”).
Multi-site collaborations, finally, consolidate community across regions and institutional sites. A 2018 Independent Cinema Office Margarethe von Trotta retrospective, launched with Carter’s “excellent” Barbican Q&A (distributor [C.2,3]) and extended through her advisory role recruiting GSSN speakers for regional events, cemented a GSSN regional partnership with HOME Manchester [D], and enhanced public visibility for Carter’s research with a von Trotta interview and Sight and Sound magazine article available online via the Independent Cinema Office website [A.4]. A further exemplary initiative was Brady’s contribution to the Goethe-Institut’s 2019 three-month retrospective of the films of Jean-Marie Straub and Danièle Huillet, staged in London across diverse institutional nodes of independent and dissident European audio-visual practice and discourse: BFI Southbank, the ICA, Institut Français, Close-Up Film Centre, KCL, BIMI and the Whitechapel Gallery. Attracting a total audience of 1,224 at the BFI alone, the retrospective significantly expanded access to this famously difficult work. It provided multiple platforms for engagement with Brady’s research via programme consultancy, a keynote introductory lecture, several workshops and film talks; it involved the GSSN in assembling community by gathering across diverse institutional sites varying configurations of academics and cultural practitioners as well as cinephile audiences; and it drew on the network as part of the scaffolding for multi-site curatorial models that brought “venues together, so there was something … interesting happening in terms of the way the programme circulated” (Straub–Huillet curator [C.4.]).
4. Fostering participatory intercultural learning
Since joining the German Studies national outreach programme, the Think German network, the GSSN has developed Carter’s concept of the contact zone to include new learner communities. Akin to the network’s public film screenings, its educational events – school lessons, workshops and study days, a CPD teacher day, widening participation events, school student film clubs, a BFI adult learner short course, an undergraduate translation skills workshop and postgraduate research skills training – are valued for the experience they deliver of participatory learning with practitioners and subject specialists. Partners have included the Independent Schools Modern Languages Association (ISMLA) [F.1], the Brilliant Club and Seren access networks, higher education partners (Queen Mary University of London, Hull, University College London), the British Association of Film, Television and Screen Studies (BAFTSS) and the BFI.
Participants value the programme’s links between film culture and modern language education, and express desires for sustained contact captured by one 2017 BFI Fassbinder short course participant: “there was some talk of the group possibly reuniting … It really was one of the finest cultural programmes I’ve been to and I hope there may be more like this to come” [C.3,1]. In a further schools workshop with a prominent Austrian filmmaker, the visitor praised the “stimulating afternoon and evening” and requested an invitation in the event of a repeat [C.2,3]. Teacher testimonials on these and other events, including CPD sessions with Carter, noted similarly how the events extended access, supported student learning with insights on approaches and relevant material for assessed work [F.2], and built resources to “fight the decline of German in schools” [F.1]. A pilot video link lesson series on a film of Jewish exile in colonial Africa also mediated to school audiences Carter’s critiques of nation-centred film narratives, as did further well-received widening participation initiatives using refugee-themed films: “The issues of multiculturalism, integration and the refugee crisis are so … important for our pupils … You kindly offered to deliver another such lecture again … which I would love to take you up on” [C.2,4].
The migration of the network to a new organisational centre in St Andrews and Aberdeen when Carter steps down as Chair in 2021, as well as the planned launch of a Vimeo series of contextualising film talks freely available to educators and learners, will enable consolidation of these educational initiatives, embedding the GSSN’s cultural activities more firmly in modern languages education, and demonstrating conclusively the network’s durability as a future-proofed entity with a future beyond REF2021.
5. Sources to corroborate the impact
A. GSSN master data: A.1. Website; A.2. Public events; A.3. Research events; A.4. Public outputs; A.5. GSSN members and associates; A.6. Codes and partners.
B. Partner testimonials: B.1. Deriaz; B.2. Hobein; B.3. Baranowska; B.4. Somerset.
C. Qualitative audience feedback: C.1. Qualitative audience data; C.2. Informal practitioner feedback; C.3. Informal audience feedback; C.4. Focus group: indicative comments.
D. Case study: Independent Cinema Office. D.1. Testimonial Clarke; D.3. Newspaper article, The Guardian.
E. Web and social media analytics: E.1. Website; E.2. Facebook and Twitter.
F. Teacher testimonials: F.1. Davidson; F.2. Gupta.
Additional contextual information
Grant funding
| Grant number | Value of grant |
|---|---|
| n/a | £552,755 |
| n/a | £35,255 |