Arsenal Book Presentation: Raumgeben – der Film dem Kino

Guest: Heide Schlüpmann

Just before the opening of the new Kino Arsenal, hardly any other book could be more fitting or better suited to be presented and discussed: Raumgeben – der Film dem Kino.

In the 1990s, Heide Schlüpmann, then a professor at the Institute for Theatre, Film and Media Studies at Goethe University Frankfurt am Main, already explicitly called for the establishment of film studies as a discipline. With Raumgeben – published in 2022 by Vorwerk 8 – she offers a multifaceted plea for cinema itself and invites readers to engage with her reflections on a theory and history of cinema in three extensive chapters. Frequently approaching the subject from the perspective of a cinema-goer, Schlüpmann reflects on theoretical, film-critical, and academic considerations of the cinema space from the 1970s through the 2010s. She highlights the importance of studying early cinema for understanding the cinematic space and situates it within the traditions and theories of private space.

“I am interested in what is lost through the transformation of film into a medium independent of the cinema. The current situation of digital distribution, including that of film history, is the reason to think about cinema again, in order to return to film from there. In this reflection, approaches to a theory of cinema from the 1970s and 1980s come to mind again, and the feminist theory and criticism of that time leads to conjectures between the private sphere and the movie theatre. Cinema is more than a dispositif; it is a historical phenomenon, a house in which, I would like to argue, the resistant aspects of what was once private—of domestic life—are preserved.”
(Heide Schlüpmann)

Heide Schlüpmann and Michael Wedel (Filmuniversität Babelsberg Konrad Wolf) will discuss Raumgeben – der Film dem Kino in our Kuppelhalle.

The event will take place in english.

Monday, March 16
Kuppelhalle
Start: 7 pm
Admission free