ERC Advanced Grant for Color Research 2015–2020

Barbara Flueckiger, founder and curator of the Timeline of Historical Film Colors, has been awarded the most prestigious “Advanced Grant” by the European Research Council (ERC), see press release of the University of Zurich:

Advanced Grants

The ERC’s generously supported “Advanced Grant” is awarded to leading European researchers who have shown outstanding achievement in their field over the last ten years and who should be afforded the freedom they need to pursue their research through attractive new projects.

[…]

Barbara Flueckiger’s research explores the influence of technological innovations on the aesthetics and narrative of films, with the digitization of film over the last decade playing an increasingly central role. In her ERC project, Barbara Flückiger and her research team will systematically investigate the relationship between technological processes and the aesthetics of film colors through a new interdisciplinary approach.

The project will develop new software to analyze a large number of color films from each decade since the invention of film. Aesthetic analyses in film history will be supplemented with measurement methods from the natural sciences to investigate the chemical and physical characteristics of film colors. Fields of application for the aesthetic and technical analyses include digitizations and restorations of historic films that will be part of the research project. In addition, research findings will be contributed on an ongoing basis to a web platform developed by Barbara Flückiger, the Timeline of Historical Film Colors , providing access to other researchers, students and interested lay persons.

The EU will support the project with a grant of 2.9 million Euro for five years from 2015 to 2020.

Three PhD positions and three postdoc or senior researcher positions will be available in this project, along with 5 positions for student assistants and one position for a web developer/ software programmer. The three postdoc/ senior researcher positions require either

• a PhD in film studies,
• a PhD in physics or chemistry,
• a master’s degree in film studies combined with an education in film restoration and several years of professional experience in the field.

Job openings and detailed descriptions will be posted on this website as soon as the financial and legal conditions will be clarified with the human resources department of the University of Zurich.

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The three winners Prof. Adriano Aguzzi, Prof. Barbara Flueckiger und Prof. Fritjof Helmchen (from left to right). (Image: Anna Maltsev, UZH)