Andrey Tarkovsky approached filmmaking as “sculpting in time,” which means that film is able to “capture time.” In the recorded form, as a final product, a film leaves traces through time that can be preserved, reproduced, recontextualized, as well as forgotten and lost. Along this line of thought, these audiovisual traces acquire both temporal and spatial dimensions, material and mnemonic capacities. In this regard, e.g. archival footage filmed in the German Democratic Republic and reused or recontextualized in the German post-reunification cinema can be approached as audiovisual traces, as well as cinematically established representations of the Holocaust carefully reproduced in contemporary fiction films like PERSIAN LESSONS (Vadim Perelman, 2020).
In the next issue, Research in Film and History invites scholars to critically reflect on the following questions: How can the notion “audiovisual traces” be conceptualized in regard to cinema and audiovisual artifacts of various historical periods and national contexts? What functions can audiovisual traces have? What methods and approaches can be applied to study audiovisual traces? How can audiovisual traces be collected, evaluated, reinterpreted, or even redesigned? We encourage submissions that apply or critically reflect on research methods on the intersection of history, film, memory studies, and digital humanities. We also invite proposals on articles, video essays, and other forms of audiovisual research that focus on theoretically informed case studies.
Possible contribution topics include (but are not limited to):
- Conservation, preservation, usage, reinterpretation: film archives and archival footage in film;
- Mediated memory: audiovisual traces in their mnemonic capacity;
- Transitions: spatial and temporal dimensions of audiovisual traces;
- Being trac(k)ed;
- Manipulation, imitation, fabrication.

Research in Film and History welcomes contributions written in English. Please submit abstracts (max. 300 words) by June 11th, 2021 in MS Word file formats to film-history@uni-bremen.de A style guide for submissions and further information for authors can be found here: https://film-history.org/submit
Notification of acceptance will be sent out by June 18th, 2021. Complete drafts are due September 11th, 2021. All texts submitted should be original work and must not be under consideration by other publications.
If you have any further questions, please feel free to contact us at film-history@uni-bremen.de