News Detail

Thomas Böttcher (Fellow / Chemistry) told us "A Story of Dinosaurs and Molecules".

Abstract:
I present a personal story of scientific curiosity that will take us on a long journey from discovering jurassic dinosaur fossils to the chemical small talk of intestinal microbes.


Maria Zhukova (Associated Fellow / Literature) explained why “'The most important thing is, that people believe': Political Leaders on TV screen in Russian Cinema, 1980s-2010s".

Abstract:
Since the middle of the 1950s TV broadcasting becomes an essential motif of the film narrative in Soviet Russia. Nevertheless only in the late 1980s the small screen in film risks to show  Russian political leaders like Brezhnev in “Assa” or Chernenko in “Direct transmission”. The process of increasing democratisation in the 1990s was cuptured in films inventing plots about new Russian leaders using television as their main political platform. The paper asks about the strategies of Russian leaders TV-representation in film, applied aesthetical features and messages, transmitted by this representation to the viewer. I argue, that TV discourse in common (and televised political authorities in particular) in Russian film since 2010 (Silvestrov, Serebrennikov, Mansky and others) is connected to different sacral motifs like visualized “red corner”, crucifix, icon or church feasts. On this way Russian film reflects the arising of religious policy after communism as en effect of television with its affect based aesthetics (McLuhan, Derrick de Kerckhove).