Research on useful media is thriving and one of the latest contributions to the fields is the 800pp-volume Films That Work Harder: The Circulation of Industrial Film (edited by Vinzenz Hediger, Florian Hoof, and Yvonne Zimmermann, Amsterdam University Press 2024). One of the editors of the volume, Yvonne Zimmermann who is one of the pioneers of research on industrial films, will join our seminar to discuss the introduction and her own contribution ( “The Power of Flows”) to the anthology as well as broader methodological and conceptual issues related to useful film. We will not least discuss the similarities and differences between film and television when it comes to their re-configurations as useful media.

For receiving the readings and the the link for the online meeting please register here.

Yvonne Zimmermann is Professor of Media Studies at Philipps-University Marburg (Germany). She is the author of Bergführer Lorenz: Karriere eines missglückten Films (2005) and editor and co-author of a volume on ‘useful cinema’ in Switzerland (Schaufenster Schweiz: Dokumentarische Gebrauchsfilme 1896-1964, 2011). She has published widely on industrial film, ‘useful cinema’, and non-theatrical film culture. (e.g. Films That Work Harder: The Global Circulations of Industrial Cinema (co-edited with Vinzenz Hediger and Florian Hoof, AUP 2019) and Advertising and the Transformation of Screen Cultures (co-written with Bo Florin and Patrick Vonderau, AUP 2018). One part of her current research focuses on Asta Nielsen and the introduction of the star system in before World War I, another on the Performative configurations in the art of projection for the popular transfer of knowledge. She is PI in the Volkswagen project „DiCi-Hub (Digital Cinema Hub): A Research Hub for Digital Film Studies“.