Open AccessBeschreibung
In the city of film Potsdam, there are 42 streets named after filmmakers. This book tells the story of Potsdam’s cinematic streetscape together with a short biography of each of the film personalities involved. The cinematic streetscape is quantitatively analyzed and interpreted as a palimpsest, as a cultural arena, and as a performative space. Older, overlooked, and forgotten layers of the streetscape come to light, and it is outlined how the practice of street naming has changed over the decades. Memory–political disputes about street names in Potsdam are reconstructed. The results of the book show how the cinematic streetscape, together with other cinematic elements and due to different echo effects, creates a filmic-induced urban space, characterized by overwriting, disputes over questions of representation, and processes of interaction with the cinematic streetscape.
For the first time in film studies, a model of a circular film-related spatial practice constituting cities of film is presented, enabling a new understanding of them as assemblages. Furthermore, this book relates city-centered film studies with critical street-name studies and combines citizen research, film history—i.e., humanities research—, social science methods, a scientific–artistic writing concept, and a revisionist perspective. Numerous illustrations and district maps enable identification of the cinematic streets, while graphics make the often complex scientific modeling comprehensible. A hyperlink structure links the main text with the short biographies of the filmmakers, allowing access to linked institutions and sources and producing a film-studies publication that also functions as an experimental public-interest publication.
Dr. Anna Luise Kiss has been the rector of the Ernst Busch University of Theatre Arts in Berlin since October 2021. At the time of this publication’s creation, she was a postdoctoral researcher at the Film University Babelsberg KONRAD WOLF and led the research project “The Cinematic Face of Cities,” funded by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research. She is the editor of the anthology Jede Menge Perspektiven. Der Regisseur Herrmann Zschoche (CineGraph Babelsberg, Berlin 2014) and—together with Dieter Chill—of Pathenheimer: Filmfotografin. DEFA Movie Stills (Ch. Links Verlag, Berlin 2016). She is one of the editors of ffk Journal no. 5 (AVINUS Verlag, Hamburg 2020). Her dissertation Topografie des Laiendarsteller-Diskurses. Zur Konstruktion von Laiendarstellerinnen und Laiendarstellern im Kinospielfilm (Springer VS, Wiesbaden) was published in March 2019. Between 2020 and 2021, she was the producer and host of the podcast “Film Studies bling-bling.”
Dipl.-Psych. Johann Pibert graduated in psychology and business administration at the University of Mannheim in 2011, with a focus on business psychology. In the research project for his diploma thesis, he developed an affective paradigm of customer satisfaction based on practical experience, which understands sales encounters as staging and performing art. Alongside his scientific work, Johann Pibert has been studying film studies as well as journalism and communication studies at the Free University of Berlin. At the time of this publication’s creation, he was an academic assistant at the Film University Babelsberg KONRAD WOLF in the research project “The Cinematic Face of Cities,” and before that in the transfer project “UNESCO Creative City of Film.” Johann Pibert developed the affective–integrative film psychology, whose research program he has been implementing in the ffk Journal (AVINUS Verlag, Hamburg) since 2019. In 2020, he was one of the editors of this journal.
