Introduction: Film Heritage and Digital Scholarship - Computer-Based Approaches to Film Archiving, Restoration and Philology

Abstract

In contemporary theory, a recent tendency has taken off discussing the relationship between Film Studies and media structures as new convergences of digital culture. In fact, in the last years, film and media studies have witnessed an emerging interest in integrating computer-based techniques for analyzing and visualizing both quantitative and qualitative data relating to film. This emerging interest can be seen in the development of approaches that involve new and practice based audiovisual methods, such as videographic criticism and video annotation, as well as various data visualization and digital humanities techniques that rely on empirical methods such as data mining, linked data, geo-tagging and mapping, in order to study, among others, filmic structure, style, discourse, storytelling and reception (Grant, 2012; Ingravalle, Prelinger & Latsis 2015; Ferguson, 2016; Verhoeven, 2016). This development has opened new territories for film history scholarship and its traditional focus on the cultural significance of films in terms of aesthetics and medium specificity, while also leading scholars to explore and reflect on potential new paths for interdisciplinary research methods (Grant, 2012; Acland & Hoyt, 2016). Many projects that are being currently carried out use digital means to study digitized film archival content, relying on fruitful cooperations between multiple disciplines. Through new tools and collaboration with scholars from disciplines that were traditionally distant from film and media studies — such as data, computer and information science, and practice-based research — the relation between researchers and their sources, films and related materials, is being reconfigured.