Book presentation "Raumgeben – der Film dem Kino" by Heide Schlüpmann

Not long before the opening of the new Arsenal cinema, there could hardly be a more fitting book to present and discuss: Raumgeben – der Film dem Kino. Back in the 1990s, Heide Schlüpmann, who was then a professor at the Institute for Theater, Film, and Media Studies at Goethe University in Frankfurt am Main, had already called for a discipline entitled cinema studies. In Raumgeben – published in 2022 by Vorwerk 8 – she formulates a multi-layered plea for cinema itself and, in three extensive chapters, shares her ideas on the theory and history of cinema with her readers. Time and again, she reflects the space of the cinema from the 1970s to the 2010s from the point of view of theory, film criticism and research and from the perspective of a moviegoer. She underlines the importance of engaging with early films in order to understand the space of the cinema and places this within the context of tradition and theories of the private sphere.

"I am interested in what is lost when film is transformed into a medium that is independent of the cinema. The current situation of digital distribution, including of film history, was the reason for thinking about the cinema in order to turn the attention back to film. In this reflection, ideas regarding a theory of cinema from the 1970s and 1980s come to mind again, and the feminist theory and criticism of that period prompts conjectures between the private sphere and the cinema. This is more than a device; it is a historical phenomenon, a house, in which, I would like to argue, the resistance of what was once private, of domestic life, is saved." (Heide Schlüpmann) 

Heide Schürmann and Michael Wedel (Film University Babelsberg Konrad Wolf) will talk about Raumgeben – der Film dem Kino in the Kuppelhalle of silent green.