Dear friends of the Hollywood Memories research project,

We are happy to share the next newsletter of the Hollywood Memories research project with you. Hollywood Memories explores whether Hollywood remakes, sequels and franchises create a shared cinematic repertoire that shapes memories, life experiences and generational identities of film viewers in a globalized world. Hollywood Memories is based at Leibniz University Hannover (Germany). The project is directed by Kathleen Loock and the research team consists of: Stefan Dierkes, Alejandra Bulla, and Zhang Yining, who has joined the project in November 2023.

Today we want to inform you about updates on our case studies, announce events that will take place in the coming months, and recap our highlights from the past months.

 

What has happened since our last newsletter?

 

New Book: Hollywood Remaking: How Film Remakes, Sequels, and Franchises Shape Industry and Culture

Kathleen Loock’s new book Hollywood Remaking: How Film Remakes, Sequels, and Franchises Shape Industry and Culture is out now with University of California Press. We congratulate Kathleen on this huge achievement and invite you to take a look at this great book.

The book challenges the categorical dismissal in film criticism of remakes, sequels, and franchises by probing what these formats really do when they revisit familiar stories. Although remaking developed as a business practice in the United States, this book shows that it also shapes cinematic aesthetics and cultural debates, fosters film-historical knowledge, and promotes feelings of generational belonging among audiences.

If you want to learn more about Kathleen’s motivation to write about cinematic remaking, take a look at this interview that the University of California Press has published on their website (here) or listen to an interview with her on the “Forgotten Hollywood” podcast.

 

Defense of Brunella Tedesco-Barlocco’s Doctoral Dissertation

On February 27, our associate member Brunella Tedesco-Barlocco, from Pompeu Fabra University in Barcelona, defended her doctoral thesis entitled “Kill your Darlings: nostalgia autofágica en multiplicidades fílmicas y televisivas contemporáneas” (“Kill your Darlings: Autophagic Nostalgia in Contemporary Film and Television Multiplicities”) directed by Dr. Glòria Salvadó Corretger. Kathleen has been appointed as a standing member of the examining board that evaluated the dissertation with an excellent cum laude. From the “Hollywood Memories” project we congratulate Brunella for this great achievement in her career and wish her all the best for her future.

 

Kathleen Loock’s Video Essay “Memories of It” Makes Sight & Sound’s “Best of 2023” list

Kathleen’s video essays “Memories of It” was voted among the prestiguous “Best Video Essays of 2023” poll by BFI’s Sight & Sound. Her video essays has received multiple mentions on the list. The video essay was published in the 11th issue of Tecmerin. Journal of Audovisual Essays (you can watch it here). The complete list of nominees can be read here.

 

#FreakyFriday on X and Instagram

Maybe not all of you follow us on our social media, so we invite you to follow us on our social media and enjoy this section that has celebrated a year since its creation, brightening up our Fridays with a little glimpse into the past, giving us a look at recent remakes, their previous versions, and their production history and impact.

 

What’s new in our case studies?

Mexican Case Study

As announced in our previous newsletter, Alejandra has visited Mexico in October and November 2023. During her trip to Mexico, Alejandra visited three different cities, each of which helped the study immensely. In Mexico City, people from the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de Mexico and the Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana Xochimilco participated in our project; in Guadalajara, students from the University of Guadalajara participated and we were also able to connect with Cineka and see the projects that are being carried out there. In Monterrey, Prof. Francisco Javier Martinez supported Alejandra’s research and helped recruit participants. We are very grateful for his help. We would also like to thank those students and professors who helped us to recruit participants for the project.

Fortunately, with all the help we received during this stay, we have been able to expand our data. We are still accepting more participants, so if you know anyone who would be interested in participating in our research, please tell them to register on our website: https://hollywood-memories.com.

 

German Case Study

Following the lecture in Hannover’s Historical Museum, two articles about the Hollywood Memories project were published in German daily newspapers, one in Der Tagesspiegel and one in Die Rheinpfalz. You can read the Tagesspiegel article here and the Rheinpfalz article here. Stefan is still occupied with the analyses and interpretation of the questionnaires and interviews and is writing his PhD thesis.

Cooperation with several senior cinemas have also helped with attracting more elderly people to the study. For all the help and cooperation with organizers of senior cinemas and the participants, we are very grateful and like to thank everyone who has given us their time to answer our manifold questions.

We are still welcoming more participants for the German case study, particularly people aged 50 years and older. Stefan will do the questionnaire with them in person and make time for in-person group interviews as well. If you happen to know people who want to share their Hollywood memories, please forward them our contact information or contact us directly via email: hollywood@uni-hannover.de

 

Chinese Case Study

As announced in our opening greeting, Zhang Yining has joined the Hollywood Memories team in November 2023. She has already made a lot of progress in her case study with Chinese audience members. Throughout March, she conducted the pilot study on our research platform Kernwert, which has yielded promising results. The start date of the main study is set for October 2024, when Yining and Kathleen are also planning to travel to Nanjing, China.

We would like to thank everyone who have participated in the pretest and pilot studies. In the meantime, we ask anyone who knows someone who is interested in participating in this case study to please register on our website, which already has a Chinese version: https://hollywood-memories.com/zh/.

 

What are our plans for the upcoming months?

Class on “Global Hollywood” in the Summer Term

During the summer term, the Hollywood Memories team will teach a class on “Global Hollywood.” In the class, we will critically engage with scholarship on the global entertainment media made in Hollywood and enter the debate about the cultural, political, and economic dominance of the U.S. popular culture around the world. The class includes the three case studies of the project (China, Germany, Mexico) and the historical role Hollywood and U.S. foreign policy played in each of the countries. The class will culminate in  our third annual workshop, which is entitled “Global Hollywood: Histories, Markets and Audiences” this year (see below for more information).

 

Call for Video Essays: “Remakes and Memories”

The Hollywood Memories research project invites video essays that explore the multifaceted layers of memory that emerge from the practice of remaking. Selected video essays will be submitted for consideration as an edited collection in the new Videographic Books series at Lever Press. In addition, the video essayists chosen for the collection will also be invited to present their work at an online event in the fall of 2024. Video essays may also be shown at a “Hollywood Memories” workshop (20-21 June 2024) and may be paired with relevant movies as part of a movie series at a local cinema in Hannover.

Find out more about how to submit your video essay on our website. The deadline for submissions is 15 June, 2024.

 

Workshop “Global Hollywood: Histories, Markets and Audiences,” June 20-21

Our third annual workshop, “Global Hollywood: Histories, Markets, Audiences,” will take place from June 20-21, 2024, in Hannover.

We have invited the following international scholars to present and discuss their work: Yongchun Fu from NingboTech University (China), Joseph Garncarz from the University of Cologne (Germany), Christine Hämmerling from the University of Innsbruck (Austria), Peter Krämer from De Monfort University (England), José Carlos Lozano from Texas A&M International University (USA), Yafei Lyu from Capital University of Economics and Business (China), Christopher Meir from the University Carlos III (Madrid), Meg Thompson (Globalgate Entertainment, USA) who works in the area of remake production and licensing, Wendy Su from University of California, Riverside (USA), Maya Nedyalkova from Oxford Brookes University (England) and last but not least, Ana Rosas Mantecón from the Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana (Mexico).

 

NECS Conference “Emergencies: Media in an Unpredictable World”, June 27-29

The Hollywood Memories team along with Philippe Meers (University of Antwerp, Belgium) and Daylanis Blanco Lobaina (Universidad de Oriente, Cuba/University of Antwerp) will be presenting at this year’s NECS conference with a panel entitled “Resisting Hollywood: Emerging Global Perspectives.” This panel seeks to approach global perspectives from film, culture and politics, taking Mexico, Cuba, China and Germany as points of reference, based on empirical audience research.

The NECS conference will be held at the Izmir University of Economics in Turkey from June 27-29.

 

HoMER Conference 2024, July 10-12

For the second time, the Hollywood Memories team will be presenting at the HoMER Conference, this year with a panel titled “Politics, Memory, and Movie Generations: Audience Research in China, Mexico, and Germany.” Our main concern is the interplay between politics, memory, and the generational identification with Hollywood movies. This subject is explored through the findings from our empirical audience research in Germany, Mexico and China.

The HoMER conference will be held at ESPM in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, from July 10-12.

 

We thank you for your continued support and for sharing these moments with us. To stay up-to-date with our progress and events, please visit our website, where you can find more information. Additionally, you can connect with us on social media by following our Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook accounts.

 

Greetings from Hannover!
Your Hollywood Memories team,

Kathleen, Alejandra, Stefan & Yining