Film Aesthetics and Childhood

• Duration: 2015 – 2018
• Project lead: Dr. Bettina Henzler

Project management: Dr. Bettina Henzler

Funding institution: DGF

Since the early days of cinema, childhood has been a common film motif and a recurring topos in film-theoretical and cinephile discourses. The complex of childhood and film touches on a broad spectrum of questions concerning aspects of the mediation and mediality of film: On the viewer, on the biographical dimension of film experiences, on the representation of children in films, but also on the specific aesthetics of film.

Up to now, these issues have mainly been dealt with from a pedagogical perspective, be it with regard to the effect of films or the genre of children’s films. In contrast, the focus of this project was on film studies research into childhood as a category of film aesthetics and film theory.

From October 2015, Bettine Henzler worked on the DFG-funded project “Film Aesthetics and Childhood”, focusing on French and German auteur films and on the cinephilic and film-theoretical discourses of childhood (see DFG). The 21st International Bremen Symposium on Film (April 27 – May 1, 2016) was dedicated to this research topic.