Lusófona hosted the 2nd FilmEU_RIT Summit

IN-CRE-DI-BLE! Last week, Lusófona University (Portugal) hosted the 2nd FilmEU_RIT Summit. The event took place between 31st May and 2nd June and It was an opportunity for the FilmEu_RIT researchers to meet in person again, present their pilot projects and discuss the ongoing work. The days were full of highlights, from the presentation of the artistic research being conducted by the transnational teams of the Alliance, to the master classes conducted by Catherine David, Teemu Maki and Sara Driver, who presented her film "Sleepwalk". You can recap some of these events on FilmEU’s Youtube channel.

Since many of the team members were already in Lisbon, we took the oportunity and hosted many diferent meetings across the teams, and the highlight goes to the "Workshop on Future Models for European Degrees", conducted by Etiketa's team, who invited researchers, teachers, students and stakeholders. ETIKETA (from the Greek ετικέτα for "label") will promote the design and test of transnational cooperation instruments based on proposed co-created European criteria, for the delivery of a joint European degree label for joint transnational higher education programmes.

On the second day, the pilot teams presented the ongoing work. It was the first time, the FilmEU team saw some outputs. We started with Pilot 1 - The European Archive of Short Animation, led by IADt researchers. This project will produce a detailed state-of-the-art report identifying and recording relevant sources of information on the production and exhibition of short animated films, in small European countries.

Pilot 2 - Decolonising the Panoramo of Congo showed us a new perspective on this piece of art hidden for years. 110 years after its first presentation in the Colonial Pavillion at the 1913 International Exhibition in Ghent, Belgium and almost 80 years after its last public display at the International Exhibition in Brussels in 1935, the large Panorama du Congo (115 x 14 meters) was unrolled to be photographed and filmed. Pictures and VR experiments are displayed in Museu Bordalo Pinheiro in Lisbon. The exhibition was opened on the 1st of June, followed by a FilmEU social event and can be visited until the 15th of June.

Expanded Memories - Pilot 3.1 moved the team the Studio F for an interactive presentation. The project aims to experiment with hybrid forms of analogue-digital (animation) film to create objects of tertiary memory.

After a special Portuguese lunch, the team meet again at Cinema Fernando Lopes for Pilot 4 - Artistic Research and Cognitive Fim Studies. This pilot seeks a transdisciplinary collaboration between artistic researchers and cognitive scholars working in the field of media- and film studies by establishing a common research agenda –founded in the heuristics of film practice and the overall research programmes of embodied cognition and neurocinema.

Pilot 3.2 - Machine Acts presented a new way for screenplay writing with the GPT-3. The pilot proposes to critically question and discover the creative potential of collaboration with machines. There is a constant reflective exchange between the artistic project and the critical approach, where we seek to understand how the role of the creator is changing.

Before the end of the day, one last special presentation with the French art curator and art historian Catherine David to discuss the state of art, followed by the social event and opening of “Unrolling the Past: The Panorama du Congo in Virtual Reality” at Museu Bordalo Pinheiro and, the “Sleepwalk” screen session at Cinema Fernando Lopes.

The last FilmEU_RIT Summit day began with the presentation of two special guests. Teemu Mäki, the Finish visual artist, expose "What is artistic research ... and is it good for you?" with several questions to make the FilmEu research reflect on the artistic research field.

Then, Sara Driver, the North American film director, shared her story through her films "The Lost and Found Films of Sara Driver". It was an immersive morning for the researchers in the room and also for the FilmEU PhD candidates.

The Doctoral Summer Seminar had a full day dedicated to the PhD candidates and their presentations. Eight PhD candidates from the four institutions presented the ongoing research and received feedback from the specialists. The other seven students had the opportunity to present their research in a public poster session.

The day ended with the round table "From RIT to FilmEU+: FuturePerspectives around Research" with Manuel José Damásio, Daithí Mac Síthigh, Teet Teinemaa and Lies Van de Vijver.

The sessions with Catherine David, Teemu Maki and Sara Driver are available on the FilmEU Youtube channel.

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