Christian FERENCZ-FLATZ (PI) https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1277-2839
PhD, lecturer at the National University of Theatre and Film Bucharest and senior researcher at the Alexandru Dragomir Institute for Philosophy. He was the PI of the research projects: “Structures of Bodily Interaction. Phenomenological Contributions to Gesture” (PCE 2020), “Continental Philosophy as a Rigorous Science. Elements of Empirical Research in Early Phenomenology and Critical Theory” (TE 2017) and „Habitus, Memory, Sediment: Facets of a Phenomenological Approach to Tradition” (TE 2010), funded by the Romanian Science Foundation (CNCS-UEFISD), as well as Senior Researcher in other philosophical and film-scholarly projects. He was a Senior Research Fellow of the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation at the University of Cologne. He published extensively in philosophical and film-scholarly journals. Together with Radu Jude, he co-authored the experimental film Eight Postcards from Utopia (in post-production). His latest monograph: Critical Theory and Phenomenology. Polemics, Appropriations, Perspectives. Dordrecht: Springer, 2023.
Adrian GRAMA (Postdoctoral Researcher) https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2551-2857
PhD in Comparative East, Central and Southeastern History, Central European University, Budapest, 2017. Research Fellow at Leibniz-Institut für Ost-und Südosteuropaforschung, Regensburg, Germany. Between 2020-2023 he was PI of the research project ‘Dominant Fictions’, financed by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG). Author of Laboring Along. Industrial Workers and the Making of Postwar Romania (Berlin: de Gruyter, 2019) and, more recently, of ‘People’s History in the Age of Populism’, Contemporary European History, Vol. 31, No. 4, 2022.
Ana SZEL (PhD) https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4768-991X
PhD Candidate in Film Theory and teaching assistant at UNATC in Bucharest. She writes a dissertation on “useful film” in Socialist Romania, which includes a chapter on socialist advertising. She has a background in music and filmmaking, she works with film archives since 2016 and her research interests include the interdisciplinary use of audiovisual media, media historiography and media archeology. Together with Christian Ferencz-Flatz, she organized the international conference ‘Useful Film under State Socialism’ in 2022 and is currently working on a collective volume based on the papers of that conference.
Liri CHAPELAN (PhD) https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1552-2779
PhD Candidate in Film Theory at UNATC in Bucharest. She just submitted a thesis that endeavors to develop a typology of contemporary hands-on usages of obsolete film technologies. Some of her areas of interest include media archaeology in former socialist countries and the ideologies, ecologies and economies of memorial and patrimonial approaches, especially in the non-western world. In line with these preoccupations, she is currently preparing an experimental media archeological workshop around postsocialist legacies and an international conference on the representation of communication barriers in East-European contemporary cinema.
Radu JUDE (Artist Researcher) https://orcid.org/0009-0006-4697-024X
Film-director and documentarist, teaches at the Babeș-Bolyai University in Cluj-Napoca. His short and feature films have been selected and awarded at several prestigious international festivals (Berlin, Locarno, Karlovy Vary, Sundance). Several of his works (The Dead Nation, Uppercase Print) make creative use of audiovisual archival materials to explore the intricate relationships between past and present, fact and fiction. Together with Historian Adrian Cioflâncă, he authored two documentary essays (The Exit of the Trains, Memories from the Eastern Front) tackling uncomfortable layers of historical memory by assembling visual documents of the country’s somber past. He delivered numerous keynote lectures, artist talks, masterclasses and workshops on the uses of audiovisual archives for historical research in prestigious academic and artistic contexts.