1/15 thursday, 21 june 2007 werner sudendorf, jürgen keiper deutsche kinemathek – museum für...

Werner Sudendorf, Jürgen KeiperDeutsche Kinemathek – Museum für Film und Fernsehen

1/15Thursday, 21 June 2007

Werner Sudendorf, Jürgen Keiper

Reconstructing Film Culture: Lost Films and Collaboration on the Web

BerlinKNOWLEDGE BY NETWORKING

Digitising Culture in Germany and EuropeJune 21, 2007



Problem:

• about 80% of silent films are lost

• also important talkies are lost

Problem that concerns each country more or less



Unidentified films



Creating context



One example: „THE CASE OF LENA SMITH“

Found materials - China: fragment of 100 meter- Japan: description of the complete film- USA: production documents, photos- USA II: set designs, private collections- Austria: censorship card- Germany: censorship card

- Austria: book publication



One example: „METROPOLIS“

Keyword in the original compositionTitle card from the censorship list

Still from a lost sequence

Original screenplay



Preliminary film list

• about 50 films



Conclusion:

• Losing knowledge about symbolic universe represented both by documentaries and feature films:

• Lack of visual culture and • Oral and Intangible

Heritage (gesture, body language)

General problem: A tentency to focus on the surviving heritage, to prioritise the visible in favour of the invisible

METROPOLISCityscape (Erich Kettelhut); Babel tower



For example:Body language of Asta

Nielsen

Das Mädchen ohne Vaterland, D 1912

Zapatas Bande, D 1913/14

At least 8 Asta Nielson films are presumed to be lost…



1. Solution: Displaying surrogates from the archives

Scripts

Advertising materials

Film journals

RONNYD 1931R: Reinhold Schünzel



Problem:Documents are scattered here and there



Solution:Collaboration on the web(webbased interface)

•Content•Annotations



Project LOST FILMS

Centre national de la cinématographie

funded by the German Federal Cultural Foundation

Start: June 2007Duration: 18 months



Problem of collaborative systems:

• Focussing on technology• Technocratic understanding of social processes

Example:Question of recognition in collaborative systems



General perspective:- Semantic networks- CIDOC CRM- Webservices for authority files, vocabularies- Collaboration with shared content- Collaboration in software development- Building expert communities

Perspective of LOST FILMS:Expert communitiesSearch, Identification, collaborative Reconstruction of further filmsCollaborative software development (open source)