The seminar, “Media Archive: History and Collections of Educational Films in Berlin,” addressed questions such as: Where can educational films be found? How can they be viewed? Most importantly, how can they be made accessible for scholarly research?
As a tandem seminar, the course addressed theoretical and practical issues related to working with educational films. In addition to approaches to film analysis and historical contextualization, the seminar also discussed the challenges of archiving and preserving film material.
The individual sessions took place at four educational film collections in Berlin. Field trips to the Berlin State Archives, the HTW Berlin Media Archive, the Berlin Library for Research on the History of Education, and the Charité Berlin Collection offered insights into contemporary methods for handling this out-of-use media content and formats.
The students learned about the history and collections of educational film archives in Berlin and how to approach film systematically as a historical source. They learned how films are made accessible through databases and metadata cataloging and which conservation measures are necessary to preserve them.
To present their perspectives on representative film examples from the four collections in a digital exhibition students use a presentation tool provided by the Digital Network for Collections.
Image: Film clips from the documentary “The Development and Growth of Berlin’s Charité” (1985)
Medical Humanities Collection, Charité – Universitätsmedizin Berlin, Photo: Carolin Pommert