Rasmus Greiner (Bremen): Cinematic Histospheres. Cinematic spaces of experience in the audiovisual memory culture

Feature films about events, people and lifeworlds of the past continue to enjoy great popularity. They are part of the audiovisual culture of memory and model historical spaces of experience. These histospheres shape our ideas of the past particularly effectively by involving us immersively, emotionally and physically in the historical contexts depicted.

The lecture focuses on the manifold processes that make such a cinematic experience of history possible. A special focus lies on the investigation of the cinematic space-time structure. At the intersection of cinematic experience, individual memory and popular conceptions of history, it will be placed in a referential relationship to the past. Concrete film examples will be used to work out the extent to which historical films not only design historical worlds, but are also shaped as a form of perception in their own right and thus a specifically cinematic approach to history.

Rasmus Greiner is a researcher in film studies at the University of Bremen. His research focuses on film and history, audio history of film, film genres and war and audiovisual media. He received his doctorate in 2012 from the Philipps-Universität Marburg on the topic “Die neuen Kriege im Film” and was awarded his habilitation in the teaching and research field of film studies at the University of Bremen in 2020. He currently heads the DFG project “Filmkomödie nach dem Dritten Reich” (Film Comedy after the Third Reich), in which he is researching German feature films from 1944/45 that were only completed or premiered after the end of the Second World War. He is also General Editor and Editorial Coordinator of the journals Research in Film and History (www.film-history.org) and After the Film (www.nachdemfilm.de).
Recent book publications: Cinematic Histospheres. On the Theory and Practice of Historical Films. London: Palgrave Macmillan 2021; Histospheres. On the Theory and Practice of Historical Films. Berlin: Bertz+Fischer 2020; Audio History des Films. Berlin: Bertz+Fischer 2018 (together with Winfried Pauleit and Mattias Frey).