CfP: Rethinking Weimar Cinema (University of Oxford, 17 – 19 June 2026)
Keynote Speakers:
Dr Paul Dobryden (Virginia)
Dr Sara F. Hall (Illinois-Chicago)
Dr Qinna Shen (Bryn Mawr)
Organizers:
Dr Lawrence Alexander (Ruskin School of Art, Oxford)
Dr Molly Harrabin (St. Andrews/Warwick).
Deadline for submitting proposals: 31 October 2025
The centennial years of the Weimar Republic (1918-1933) have seen a rise in academic engagement with and public interest in this period of German film history. As one of the most dynamic and experimental periods in global cinema, Weimar film has long been recognized for its aesthetic innovations, sociopolitical commentary, and influence on subsequent film movements. Yet these anniversary commemorations have not only reaffirmed the significance of this era, they have also opened the door for new questions, perspectives, and critical paradigms. This conference seeks to build on this momentum by revisiting Weimar cinema through fresh critical lenses and innovative methodologies, inviting participants to reconsider its cultural, political, and aesthetic significance in light of new archival discoveries, theoretical frameworks, and interdisciplinary approaches.
The Weimar Republic and its cultural output are often regarded as a moment of exceptionalism prior to the arrival of the Third Reich in 1933, a ‘golden age’ in German history and cultural production. Films such as Das Cabinet des Dr. Caligari and Metropolis are heralded for their technological innovations and influence on other filmmaking traditions from the 1920s to the present day. However, this celebratory approach has also contributed to a somewhat narrow perception of what Weimar cinema truly encompasses—one that tends to focus on a limited set of canonical films produced in Berlin by a select group of directors and film companies, most notably UFA. Subsequently, contributions made to German cinematic culture by other cities, for example, Munich and Heidelberg, but also elsewhere in the German-speaking world such as Austria and transnational collaborations with countries including Denmark and Great Britain have been largely overlooked.
This conference also aims to further develop the incorporation of more diverse subjectivities into the study of Weimar cinema, foregrounding identities, perspectives, and experiences that have historically been marginalized or rendered invisible within dominant narratives of the period. This includes, but is not limited to, considerations of gender and sexuality, race and ethnicity, class, and disability. By critically engaging with how these subjectivities were represented, negotiated, or excluded in Weimar film culture, we seek to complicate and enrich our understanding of the social and cinematic landscape of the era.
Furthermore, scholarship often ignores the collaborative nature of the Weimar filmmaking process and the impact of those who fall outside of Weimar’s star system (extras, scriptwriters, camera operators, costume and set designers, etc.). By sidelining these contributions, dominant historiographies risk reinforcing a hierarchical and auteur-focused understanding of film history that obscures the complex and collective labour underpinning film production. Accordingly, we call renewed attention to these aspects of cultural production, circulation, and consumption during the period in line with what has been called the ‘contextual turn’ in film scholarship: a ‘methodological shift’ towards increased attention to the networks by which texts travel and ‘the material and discursive practices that frame them’ (Balsom 2017, 18). We encourage papers that explore the diverse landscape of Weimar cinema, moving beyond the traditionally emphasized Expressionist and New Objectivity movements to include analyses of films from a wide variety of theatrical and exhibition contexts, from the film palace to the classroom. These may include educational films, comedies, experimental works, and lesser-studied genres such as musicals.
Inspired by Paul Dobryden’s study The Hygienic Apparatus (2022), we seek to engage with debates that situate Weimar film as a cinematic environment with implications for public hygiene, mobility, and the broader climate. Building on this framework, we invite contributions that consider how Weimar cinema operated within a broader matrix of biopolitical governance and sensory experience—how film mediated shifting notions of space, cleanliness, contamination, and ecological awareness. This approach reconsiders the Weimar filmic landscape as more than a symbolic or narrative space; instead, it becomes a dynamic cinematic environment in which the boundaries between the human body, the machine, and the urban or natural world are constantly negotiated. In this way, Weimar cinema can be understood as an influential site for negotiating modernity’s technological and environmental tensions, anticipating many of the questions that continue to animate media theory, ecocriticism, and film-philosophy today.
The conference will take stock of our current understanding of Weimar film to map where this field may be heading as well as offering new genealogies of those images, figures, and texts that have defined it thus far. Beyond those mentioned above, topics of papers may also include but are not limited to:
- Film culture outside of Berlin and elsewhere in Germany and Austria
- The collaborative nature of Weimar filmmaking
- Role and representation of women in the Weimar filmmaking industry
- Transnational Weimar cinema
- Aspects of cultural production, circulation, and consumption
- Weimar Film Studies in the time of the Anthropocene
- Representations and reflections of racial and/or ethnic difference
- Queer and trans* Weimar cinema
- New media historiographies and archaeologies
- Archival practices and restoration
- Canon formation and revision
- Weimar film genres, familiar and neglected, popular and cult
- Colonial connections and postcolonial circulations
- Representations of injury, disability, and physical or sensory impairment
- Images of work, labour, and class
- Experimental and non-theatrical screen practices
- Weimar cinema from intermedial perspectives
- Teaching Weimar film in the classroom
In addition to traditional conference papers, we welcome contributions from archivists, practice-based researchers, and works of videographic criticism. Please submit proposals of up to 300 words to [email protected] and [email protected] by 31st October 2025. Notices of acceptance will be sent out in December 2025.
A limited number of bursaries are available to contribute to travel and accommodation costs for postgraduate and early-career speakers.
This event is hosted by the Weimar Film Network and funded by the DAAD (German Academic Exchange Service) as part of a three-year Promoting German Studies networking grant awarded to the German Screen Studies Network, co-directed by Dr Paul Flaig and Dr Dora Osborne.