Symposium Day Four - Resounding Archives: The Politics of Listening to The Moving Image

Saturday, September 21, 2024

10:00–11:30
Panel 7
Listen Up and Be Persuaded: Archives of Interpellation

Film sounds are often designed to be authoritative and persuasive, from the soundtracks of advertising films to illustrated lectures. These sounds position viewers/listeners as citizens or consumers. They constitute an archive of interpellation in which the politics of listening to moving images become particularly salient.
Christian Ferencz-Flatz (Bucharest) will talk about the sound of advertising films in post-socialist Romania.
Tom Rice (St. Andrews) will discuss the lost art of film strip presentation, a precursor to tiktok videos.
Moderation: Salma Siddique (Berlin)

12:00–13:30
Panel 8
Sounding Out Materiality: Archiving Foley Sound

Foley is the art of adding sound effects and music to moving images. But Foley is also the work of finding unsuspected sonic lineages between seemingly unrelated materials, e.g. vegetables and plastics. Mapping and reconstructing the history of Foley, which includes lost traces of sound from the silent era, requires new modes of sonic fabulation.
Jonáš Kucharský (Prague) will talk about the Foley archive at the Národní filmový archiv.
Simone Nowicki (Frankfurt am Main) will discuss Foley artists and how they have localized themselves throughout history.
Moderation: Vinzenz Hediger (Frankfurt am Main)

Christian Ferencz-Flatz is a philosopher and media scholar currently affiliated as a researcher at the University of Bucharest and a teacher at Bucharest’s National University of Theatre and Film. His research concerns phenomenology, critical theory, the philosophy of history, and film and media philosophy. His latest monographs include: Critical Theory and Phenomenology: Polemics, Appropriations, Perspectives (Springer, 2023) and Filmul ca situație socială/Film as a Social Situation (Tact, 2018). He has published numerous essays and research articles on philosophy and film in scholarly journals. Together with filmmaker Radu Jude, he is the co-author of the found footage film Eight Postcards from Utopia (2024). He is currently developing a research project devoted to post-socialist advertising. 

Tom Rice is a Professor in Film Studies at University of St. Andrews, Scotland. He is the author of White Robes, Silver Screens: Movies and the Making of the Ku Klux Klan (2015) and Films for the Colonies: Cinema and the Preservation of the British Empire (2019). He previously worked as the senior researcher on a major archival project on British colonial film, and has extensive experience working with global archives, most recently through his RSE-funded network on filmstrips.

Salma Siddique is a media scholar, lecturer, and author of the book Evacuee Cinema: Bombay and Lahore in Partition Transit (Cambridge University Press, 2022). Her research expertise includes South Asian cinema, informal media archives, feminist humor, digital labor, and filmgoing. She has taught undergraduate and postgraduate courses on film theory and media studies in India, the UK, and Germany. She is the principal investigator of the research project Nitrate Cities: Spectatorial Exertions and Film Experience in Urban South Asia, funded by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (2021-2025) at Humboldt University of Berlin. Since 2022, she has been core editor at BioScope: South Asian Screen Studies, published by Sage.

Jonáš Kucharský is a curator of music and sound at the Národní filmový archiv in Prague. His research topics include electroacoustic music and sound preservation, restoration, and presentation. He has presented papers at MaMI Conference, IASA, and Filmmuseum Potsdam and held a masterclass on restoring the sound of the films Extase (1933) and Až přijde kocour (1963) at Il Cinema Ritrovato in Bologna. He has published in musicology, film history, and information science journals. He is co-author of a book dedicated to the history of Czech electroacoustic music and has held various lectures on music and sound history, experimental music, and pop culture.

Simone Nowicki is a doctoral candidate in the graduate program Configurations of Film at Goethe University Frankfurt, where she is researching the labor, craft, and history of Foley artistry. She has worked as a Foley artist and sound designer for film, museums, and (live) radio plays throughout Germany for many years. Her current sound projects include auditory collaborations with the UNESCO World Documentary Heritage Arolsen Archives, the Elbphilharmonie in Hamburg, and the Prussian Museums in Berlin.