The project “Film Circulation on the International Film Festival Network and the Impact on Global Film Culture” (2017-2022) is a research project funded by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) under the scheme “Small Disciplines, High Potential”. It started in August 2017 under the leadership of Dr. Skadi Loist as primary investigator at the University of Rostock. In March 2018 it transfered to the Film University Babelsberg KONRAD WOLF where Dr. Zhenya Samoilova joined the project as postdoctoral researcher in August 2018. Due to changes in the workflow (e.g. because of care responsibilities and disruptions due to the Corona pandemic) the project running time has been extended to April 2022.
The Film Circulation project aims to create a large data set of festival runs for films circulating within the festival network based on the complete program of six major film festivals, documenting the run from premiere to the end of its festival life. This data collection forms the basis for the development of a new method for the visualization of the complex temporal and spatial circulation patterns of the films in the festival network: mapping the festival runs. The project uses approaches from the digital humanities and geo-visualization in order to develop new analytical methods for Film Studies. Further analysis of this mapping attempts a nuanced evaluation about how films circulate, depending on parameters such as country of origin, genre, budget within the far-reaching festival network, and how festivals influence the distribution of films in global film culture.