The interdisciplinary research project I-Media-Cities aims to develop technology for providing access to the audiovisual collections of cultural institutions, including methods for automatic annotation, and thus facilitating research from a wide range of perspectives on this kind of archive materials. The project is funded by Horizon2020 in the call ”Reflective Societies: Cultural Heritage and European Identities” on the specific topic ”Innovation ecosystems of digital cultural assets”. As the title suggests, I-Media-Cities deals with the subject of cities in moving image media, and Stockholm University’s part in the project involves research on the genre of films known as “city films”, with a particular focus on such films showcasing the city of Stockholm within the collections of the Swedish Film Institute, our local partner in this project. At the end of the three-year project, researchers (primarily) and other potential visitors (secondarily) will be able to view so called city films and related materials from nine European cities (of which Stockholm is one) in e-environments adapted to each user group with advanced search tools, contextualizing materials, and interactive functions.
An important theme in this project, beyond city development and architectural history on film, is the representation of film industry related places and spaces, such as cinemas, in the city films. In the research group there is also an interest for the gendering of urban spaces, and the relationship between city films, masculinity and femininity.
