Jean Benoit-Lévy (1888-1959) - Nicholas Kaufmann (1892-1970)/Curt Thomalla (1890-1939). Medical film directors and their oeuvre in a Franco-German comparison
After the workshops Le film sanitaire: une forme cinématographique à part? (June 2009, Strasbourg), Medical Films: Questions about genres (October 2009, Berlin) and Tourner (autour d’) un film sanitaire: Regards, lectures, analyses (June 2010, Strasbourg) organized by Anja Laukötter and Christian Bonah the following workshop is devoted to an international comparative perspective on two major medical film directors and their oeuvre.
Looking at the history of medicine in Germany and France in the first half of the 20th Century we can identify two phenomena in both countries:
- An intense and constant growth in the use of cinematography for public health instruction. The produced so-called educational films dealt with topics such as sexual hygiene and infectious diseases to enlighten and to instruct the public. Increasingly adapted to the societal demands and expectations of audiences these films became more elaborate and complex in a filmic sense developing from pure documentary character to more differentiated, sophisticated and even avant-garde forms. Additionally the commissioning institution behind these films differed from film to film (e.g. governmental departments, health and temperance societies, industry, etc.) and production contracts could associate more than one institution – potentially, all of them, with varying motivations and intentions.
- Despite the increase of medical film production we can identify central figures which dominated the medical film production from the 1920s till the 1950s in both countries: Jean Benoit-Lévy (1888-1959) for France and Nicholas Kaufmann (1892-1970)/Curt Thomalla (1890-194?) for Germany. In both countries these figures were at the centre of intellectual networks either directing several health education films themselves or directly involved in their productions as commissioners, scriptwriters or scientific advisors. Furthermore all three figures reflected on the meaning and necessity of medical and health education films and published extensively about the subject contributing to the ongoing discourse on medical films from the interwar years to the 1950s.
Combining these two lines, the workshop aims to analyse developments of medical film history in the first half of the 20th Century by comparing the oeuvre of Jean Benoit-Lévy and Nicholas Kaufmann/Curt Thomalla:
- Looking at the different national contexts we have to keep in mind the medical and political discourses of the time and reflect on the status of film production within national health campaigns: What were the filmic relevant bio-political discourses at the time? How did they change from a democratic system to dictatorship, and from peace- to wartime? Was the political involvement of the discussed directors relevant to their film making – and if so: how?
- Taking into account that protagonists came from different social backgrounds we will oppose some of their early and later film work: Which were the medical topics they picked up and why? How did they introduce these topics into their films? What kind of film aesthetics, montage techniques, dramaturgy etc. did they use? Which film developments within their work can be identified? How did these directors shape the medical discourses by their published reflections on medical films?
- Besides the comparative film analysis we will try to compare modes of medical film production: how and with whom did they produce their films? Where were the films screened and in which form – with music, together with a lecture, for target audiences? How were the films received?
To discuss both case studies in a French-German comparative perspective aims to question dominant interpretations and frameworks as the individual/local versus national or the national versus the global. Furthermore, this broader comparative perspective will provide new insights into mutual filmic influences: not only how one film inspired the other but how networks of filmic influence evolved over almost half a decade.
Click here for videos of the workshop presentations and discussions.
missionaryPROG.pdf (0.9 Mo)
