International Symposium "Critique and Modernity: Rediscovering Louis Delluc", May 22nd-24th 2025 in Frankfurt

The first decades of the twentieth century constituted an extraordinary historical juncture on multiple levels. As society itself was evolving rapidly through the combined forces of technological change, economic upheavals and political revolution, the arts were undergoing their own seismic shifts, with the rise of modernism and the avant-garde, and the concomitant obliteration of previously unshakeable aesthetic conventions. Within this social and artistic maelstrom, a major role was played by the new medium of the cinema, which both visually traced the sweeping transformations of the era while also upending prevailing disciplinary demarcations among the more established art forms. Charting these cataclysmic events was a generation of critics across Western Europe and North America, who obsessively consumed audiovisual experiences in the movie theaters that were sprouting up at the time and played a decisive role in the advent of film criticism as a cultural practice. As Francesco Casetti has claimed, the writing produced by these critics represented the “eye of the century”.

One of the most important figures in this generation was the French critic Louis Delluc. Despite dying at the young age of 33 in 1924, Delluc’s contribution to film criticism and theory is hard to overestimate. Although it is fraught to speak of him as “the first film critic,” Delluc’s critical writings on cinema in the late 1910s and early 1920s were decisive for the recognition of critical writing on cinema to take hold. A prolific author, delivering several articles a week during his most productive moments for magazines such as Le Film, Cinéa and Ciné pour tous, Delluc’s output mixed film reviewing with more essayistic and even theoretical texts, helping to establish some of the major concepts in the study of film, which continue to be operative in the present day. Later, he turned to filmmaking himself, producing a small but influential body of work before his untimely death.

The conference “Critique and Modernity: Rediscovering Louis Delluc” will seek to provide historical context for the work of Delluc and peers of his such as Riciotto Canudo, Jean Epstein, Germaine Dulac and Léon Moussinac, while also proposing his writings as a template with which contemporary scholars can engage with the sweeping transformations to the media landscape that are taking place in the present day.

Venue:
Room EG.01
Normative Orders Building
Westend Campus, Max-Horkheimer-Straße 2
Frankfurt am Main

Organised by the
Institut für Theater-, Film- und
Medienwissenschaft
Goethe-Universität Frankfurt

Register for attendance with:
Daniel Fairfax

More information soon on the website:
www.rediscovering-louis-delluc.de

Die 11. Ausgabe des Festivals findet erstmals in Kassel statt.

Ab sofort finden sich alle Informationen zur PLURALE auf der neuen Festival-Homepage. Dort werden die 24 ausgewählten hochschulübergreifenden und interdisziplinären Projekte vorgestellt, die vom 17. bis 25. Mai 2025 auf den 1400 qm der documenta-Halle und im benachbarten Staatstheater Kassel präsentiert werden.

Kooperation und Improvisation zwischen verschiedenen künstlerischen Disziplinen und zwischen den Partnerhochschulen stellen für das Festival wichtige Antriebsfedern dar – als eine Einladung dazu, nicht nur zu reproduzieren, sondern zu gestalten, jenseits von Rezept und Sehgewohnheit.

Eine Kooperation folgender Institutionen:

• Institut für Angewandte Theaterwissenschaft der Justus-Liebig-Universität Gießen
• Studiengang Curatorial Studies der Goethe-Universität Frankfurt und der Hochschule für Bildende Künste – Städelschule
• Studiengang Dramaturgie der Goethe-Universität Frankfurt
• Hessische Theaterakademie (HTA)
• Hochschule für Gestaltung (HfG) Offenbach (Initiatorin, Koordinatorin)
• Hochschule für Musik und Darstellende Kunst (HfMDK) Frankfurt
• Kunsthochschule Kassel (KhK)
• Kunsthochschule Mainz

Auf einen Blick

PLURALE – 11. Festival der jungen Talente
17. bis 25. Mai 2025

Eröffnung
16. Mai, 18 Uhr, durch Timon Gremmels, Hessischer Minister für Wissenschaft und Forschung, Kunst und Kultur
Ort: documenta-Halle

Öffnungszeiten
Di–So, 11 bis 18 Uhr
Do, 11 bis 20 Uhr

Veranstaltungsorte

documenta-Halle, Du-Ry-Straße 1, Kassel
Staatstheater Kassel, Friedrichsplatz 15, Kassel

Alle Informationen gibt es auf der Webseite.

Seit mehr als zehn Jahren beschäftigt sich die Reihe „Lecture & Film“ über zwei Semester hinweg jeweils mit dem Werk einer bedeutenden Regisseurin oder eines bedeutenden Regisseurs oder einem thematischen Feld. Die aktuelle „Lecture & Film“-Reihe befasst sich mit dem Thema „Black Atlantic Cinema“.

“Sich selbst sehen durch die Augen … einer Nation, die einen mit Verachtung anblickt”: Das ist W.E.B. DuBois‘ Formel für das “doppelte Bewusstsein”, in dem marginale Menschen in Gesellschaften leben, die von Unterdrückung geprägt sind. Unter dem Titel „Black Atlantic Cinema“ stellt die Lecture & Film-Reihe eine filmische Praxis ins Zentrum, die drei Kontinente und die Geschichte von mehreren Jahrhunderten umfasst und den Rahmen einer nationalstaatlichen Betrachtung konsequent hinter sich lässt. In der Reihe nähern sich Wissenschaftler:innen, Kurator:innen und Künstler:innen den vielfältigen Weisen an, in denen Filmkünstler:innen auf die Herausforderung des Lebens im „doppelten Bewusstsein“ antworten, von Afrika über Brasilien und die Karibik bis hin zum (post)kolonialen Europa.

15.5.2025  8pm / 20 Uhr

Janaína Oliveira (Rio de Janeiro)
Encruzilhadas das águas / Water Crossings, routes for the Black Brazilian Cinemas’ experiences

“We are always in the middle of the journey,” says essayist and poet Dionne Brand in A Map to the Door of No Return. The crossing of the Atlantic marks Black people's historical and aesthetic experiences, bringing fragmentation and incompleteness, but also the crossroads that shape lives in the African diasporas. The Encruzilhadas das águas / Water Crossings program offers a path for thinking about the Atlantic routes that shape Black cinemas in Brazil, proposing the encounter of contemporary works with Zózimo Bulbul's pioneering film, in a kind of cinematographic panorama through the waters.
Janaína Oliveira hold a Ph.D. in History and is a professor at the Federal Institute of Rio de Janeiro (IFRJ). She is Head Programmer at the Zózimo Bulbul Black Film Festival in Rio de Janeiro and on the programming committees for FINCAR (Festival Internacional de Cinema de Realizadoras) and International Women Filmmakers Festival in Recife.

Film Program:


• Alma no Olho (Soul in the eye), Zózimo Bulbul (Brazil, 1973, 13 min)

• NoirBlue, Displacents of a dance, Ana Pi, Brazil, 2018, 27 min.

• Se o mar tivesse varandas (If the sea had balconies), Aline Motta, Brazil, 2017, 9 min.
• Mal di Mare (Seasick), João Vieira Torres, France/Brazil, 2021, 15 min.
• Mar de Dentro, Lia Letícia, Brazil, 2024, 8 min.  
• De um lado do Atlântico (On One Side of the Atlantic), Milena Manfredini, Brazil, 2017, 7 min.

Die Veranstaltung findet um 20 Uhr im Kino des DFF statt.

Alle Informationen gibt es auf der Webseite.

For more than ten years, the “Lecture & Film” series has explored the work of a significant filmmaker or a specific thematic field over the course of two semesters. The current edition of “Lecture & Film” is dedicated to the theme “Black Atlantic Cinema.” 

“To see oneself through the eyes... of a nation that looks at one with contempt”: this is W.E.B. Du Bois’s formulation of “double consciousness,” the condition in which marginalized people live within societies shaped by oppression. Under the title Black Atlantic Cinema, the series centers on a cinematic practice that spans three continents and several centuries of history—deliberately moving beyond the boundaries of nation-state perspectives. Scholars, curators, and artists examine the many ways in which filmmakers respond to the challenges of life within “double consciousness,” from Africa to Brazil and the Caribbean to (post)colonial Europe.

8.5.2025, 20 Uhr

A young university student searches for a room to let. An American GI searches for love between visiting record shops and gigging with his band.

Olingo and They Call It Love, respectively, are both black and white student films featuring wandering Black male protagonists in Germany. In her lecture, Karina Griffith introduces the term flânoire films, which she uses to describe works spearheaded by Black authors of German cinemas that refuse the stagnation of affects such as consternation (Betroffenheit) in exchange for active vibes. Flânoire films are characterized by their representations of unfettered Black mobility in Europe and a focus on respect rather than belonging.

Dr. Karina Griffith teaches in the Faculty of Architecture, Media and Design as Professor of Intersectional Visual and Media Theory at the Berlin University of the Arts (UdK). She holds a PhD in Cinema Studies from the University of Toronto and a Masters in Feature Film from Goldsmiths College London. She has been part of the curatorial team of the Berlinale Film Festival section Forum Expanded sinc 2021, and she is one of 12 fellows selected for the 2025 VILA SUL residency program in Salvador de Bahia, Brazil.

Films: They Call It Love, King Ampaw, BRD 1972.
            Olingo, Emile Itolo, DDR 1966, 11 min.

The event will take place at 8:00 pm at the DFF.

More Infos here.