Prof. Dr. Vinzenz Hediger
Goethe University Frankfurt
Vinzenz Hediger is a professor of cinema studies at Goethe University Frankfurt. His research is focused on the history and theory of film, film and entertainment industries, marginal film forms including science and industrial films, and the digital transformation of global film culture. His publications include a book on the history of movie trailers and two volumes on industrial films, Films That Work: Industrial Films and the Productivity of Media (with Patrick Vonderau, 2009) and Films That Work Harder: The Circulations of Industrial Film (with Yvonne Zimmermann and Florian Hoof, 2022). Since 2019, Hediger has been collaborating with the University of Jos and the Nigerian Film Corporation on a DAAD-funded project to build a film archival studies training program in Jos, Nigeria.
Vinzenz Hediger primarily contributes to the work in Working Area A: Forms, Formats and Contents, in Working Area B: Legal and Institutional Frameworks, in Working Area C: Archives and Cultural Heritage, in Project 1.2 on Archival Access and Artistic Creation: Nigerian Film Heritage in the Novelty Spiral and in Project 2.1. on Digital Transformation and Formal Innovation in the Nigerian Music Industry.
My CEDITRAA story
“CEDITRAA gives me the opportunity to pursue some of the key questions in cinema studies today: Why and how do some areas develop vibrant film cultures and others don’t? And how do digital technologies facilitate challenges to long-standing cultural hegemonies and help to reshape the map of cultural production and of global cultural flows? Nigeria, which has seen the spontaneous growth of a film and music industry without the usual forms of state support, and South Korea, where a confluence of democratization, deregulation, and infrastructural policies have led to the emergence of a cinema that combines popular appeal with critical appraisal, have long fascinated me as cases in point. I hope to come out of CEDITRAA with a better understanding of their respective dynamics and success.”
