The ERC BodyCapital team had the pleasure of hearing about Katrin Pilz's work on 17 June 2019. Katrin, a historian and cultural scientist, has completed on a PhD on early medical cinematography in Brussels and Vienna at the Université Libre de Bruxelles (ULB) in cooperation with the University of Vienna. She is currently key researcher at the Ludwig Boltzmann Institute for Digital History within the Austrian Science Fund (FWF) project on “Educational film practice in Austria (Praktiken des Lehr- und Unterrichtsfilms in Österreich)”.
We heard both about her recent research on sex education films of the 1920s and her exciting upcoming project on education films in Austria.
Viennese sex education films of the 1920s
Representatives of popular, cinematic and film-industrial circles of the 1920s tried to educate public audiences about sensitive topics such as venereal diseases, reproduction, sexual hygiene, homosexuality and prostitution. The production and use of sex education films was an attempt to engage and educate the sensational topic of sex and the sensational medium of film intended to make profits though without it being commercially linked (which was regarded to be of less educational value if exclusively produced as a commercial film). This engendered a new form of consuming and experiencing knowledge about sexuality. Health propaganda films were intended to address a broader public, used as a medical visual marketing strategy, these popular forms of communication spawned a broader debate and higher acceptance around social issues regarding sexuality. They enabled new scientific and popular approaches that predicted a modern concept of sexuality as a consumer good, but were rarely satisfactorily resolved for all involved – from neither economic, moral nor educational perspectives. It is no coincidence that the boundaries between propaganda, educational and advertising films were fluid in this period.
In a recent paper, she thus considered Viennese sex education films as a possible product and service and analysed them in the context of consumer and health-oriented structures. Further, debates on sexuality, consumption, mass media and popularizing conventions, interwoven with ideas of 'healthy' and 'sick' sexually connoted bodies, have been examined.
Educational Film Practice in Austria
The moving image has challenged and modified established notions and procedures of education until today, with film being used in a variety of educational contexts after World War I. Yet, there is no comprehensive research on educational film in Austria so far. This project aims to fill that gap, investigating the history of educational usage of film in Austria between 1918 and the late 1960s. The examined uses range from classroom projections and screenings for popular education to academic teaching and occupational training.
The object of research is educational film as practice. This concept of practice encompasses not only the screened films, but also the institutions that commissioned and distributed them, the legal provisions enacted to regulate use of films in educational contexts, and the venues and set-ups of screenings. Educational screenings could take place in classrooms or commercial cinemas, in lecture halls or factory assembly rooms. The set-ups could include accompanying lectures by educators, tasks for the audiences, or the halting of a film strip in mid-projection. We use the concept of dispositif to describe how these different elements interacted with each other and with a screening’s intended goal(s). The main thesis of the research project is that educational film practice materializes in the linkage between institutional policies, screening situations and the form, style, and content of the films screened. This emphasis on practice is still rare in film studies and has implications for empirical research (combining films with printed documents, like instruction leaflets and lecture scripts, that have been traditionally stored in other repositories), as well as interpretation of the collected information (stressing how a film’s meaning was affected by screening circumstances).
Apart from a database and media collection and the dissemination of results in peer-reviewed publications and academic conferences, she is also planning an educational outreach program, discussing their results on the history of educational film in Austria with educators, high school students and stakeholders in popular education. As the moving image keeps challenging ideas of instruction and pedagogy—in the form of online how-to’s and explainer videos, for instance—she expects their results to be instructive for the present day as well.
Recent Publications
- Katrin Pilz, Aufklärungs-, Lehr-, oder Bildungsfilm. Der Wiener Hygienefilm der 1920er-Jahre, in: Christian Stifter (Hg.), Spurensuche. Zeitschrift fu?r Geschichte der Erwachsenenbildung und Wissenschaftspopularisierung. Ko?rperbilder, Medizin, Gesundheit und Bewegung in der Volks- und Erwachsenenbildung des 19. und 20. Jahrhunderts (2018), S. 45-59.
- Katrin Pilz, „Aufklärung? Abschreckung? In der mit Sexualität gespannten Atmosphäre des Kinos?“ – Sexualität in Wiener klinischen und popula?rwissenschaftlichen Filmen der Moderne. In: Aylin Basaran/Julia B. Köhne/Klaudija Sabo/Christina Wieder (Hrsg.): Sexualität und Widerstand. Internationale Filmkulturen, Berlin 2018, 54–76. ?
- Katrin Pilz, Lorenz Böhlers Filme zur Notfallmedizin und Orthopädie. Debatten um Operationstechniken, Therapieformen, Konkurrenz und transnationaler Wissensvermittlung, in: Daniela Angetter – Birgit Nemec – Herbert Posch (Hg.), Strukturen und Netzwerke – Medizin und Wissenschaft in Wien, 1848-1955. Wissenschaft, Politik, Ökonomie, Gesellschaft und Kultur im Kontext internationaler Veränderungsprozesse. Göttingen: V & R Unipress | Vienna University Press 2018.
- Katrin Pilz, Re-Edited Medical Films in Vienna: Vom “physiologischen Theater“ zum chirurgischen Filmset und “orthopädischen Filmzirkus“, in: Delia González de Reufels – Rasmus Greiner – Stefano Odorico – Winfried Pauleit (Hg.), Film als Forschungsmethode. Produktion – Geschichte – Perspektiven. Bremen: Bertz + Fischer 2018.
We look forward to working more with Katrin and the history of education films in Austria.