Research at the School of Film Directing

In 2009, the School of Film directing was awarded a grant by the Swedish Research Council. Göran du Rées, Professor at the School of Film Directing was awarded 2.7 million Swedish crowns for a three-year period for the project: "Blicken på Kopparmärra" (English transl.: An eye on ‘Kopparmärra’ - An investigation of practical concepts in filmmaking. (‘Kopparmärra’ is a famous statue and meeting place in the centre of Gothenburg). The ambition of this research project is to find new usable concepts for what film and the moving image constitute today.

The digital revolution that has taken place in the recording, the dissemination and the consumption of moving images has opened up completely new possibilities for filmmaking, but these possibilities are, more often than not, limited by a traditional way of defining what film is. The original image and the very essence of light to create images will be illustrated by setting up a ”camera obscura”, with the Kopparmärra statue in Gothenburg as the motive. This is the first research grant to be awarded to the School of Film Directing for artistic research.

The School of Film Directing is also part of the research project Passion for the Real, which is an interdisciplinary scientific project about the documentary, also supported by the Swedish Research Council. The part of this project related to film is led by Professor Göran du Rées; it has artistic practice as its starting point in order to find themes around basic questions regarding the moving image and the digital change it is undergoing – it takes up such subjects as: the event and memory; perception and reconstruction; history, identity and power.