Montgomery Fellow to teach in Film & Media Studies

Shaping Cinema's Futures with Remnants of the Past with Professor Vinzenz Hediger.

FILM 47.63

Fall 2025 • 3A (MW 3:30-5:20 PM, M 5:30-6:20 PM)

The Film Archive as a site for Experimental History

One of the promises of digitization was that the entire history of film would become available at the tip of your fingers. Currently the oldest film on Netflix is "The Sting" from 1972, and it is the rare exception of a film that is older than five years. Streaming has become an agent of erasure rather than of the remembrance of film history. This course builds on ongoing research projects, curatorial work and training programs in film archiving in West Africa, the Middle East and India to teach students a broader understanding of film, of cinema's multiple histories across the world, and of its possible futures.

Together we explore ways in which the digital information space can become a space of possibility for new histories of cinema.
A practice-oriented element of the course will connect to the Media Ecology Project at Dartmouth and its digital film collections. In particular, students will be asked to form work groups to create video essays based on archival materials as a key course requirement.