The Research Film Studio is a Princeton University academic program seated in the University Center for Human Values. The Research Film Studio provides an opportunity for Princeton University faculty (Local Spirit Initiative) and students – inside and outside of the curriculum – to develop their research ideas through short films as well as other publications in immersive and mixed media and supports the project-based learning in the Founding Director’s Princeton courses. The Research Film Studio regularly invites award-winning film directors for intensive filmmaking workshops and produces exhibitions and films for global platforms such as the Venice and the Mallorca Biennale and film festivals. The production of exhibitions and films are made possible by grants from the University Center for Human Values, the Council of Humanities, the Bobst Center for Peace and Justice, the Liechtenstein Institute on Self-Determination, CreativeX, the Princeton Histories Fund, and Bert G. Kerstetter ’66.
Genius Loci: Research Film Studio Exhibition Preview
Filmmakers’ Camp 2025 LA – Workshop on the sand
Filmmakers’ Camp 2025 LA – The Broad
Filmmakers’ Camp 2025 LA – Academy Museum, Sightseeing, Griffith Observatory
The Research Film Studio courses facilitate creative project-based learning in the form of various filmmaking exercises that break down the cinematic craft into manageable parts. The students’ Productivity is amplified by a digital database of memes collected from the studied films and the use of open-source AI automation of Photoshop, editing, animation and even TikTok. The students’ course-work is published on the course website and exhibited on global platforms.
The Research Film Studio’s student chapter grew out of an extracurricular filmmaking workshop co-taught by the award-winning director, Bence Fliegauf and Princeton professor, Erika A. Kiss in the fall of 2019. Our first project was a short historical film about the 1914 November 12 White House meeting between President Woodrow Wilson and William Monroe Trotter in which the President inadvertently blurted out that he knows and approves of the segregation of the federal workforce, the civil servants.
In 2018, Erika Kiss, Sigrid Adriaenssens, Chris Tully and John Higgins launched a faculty initiative in Princeton University that recognizes the increasing importance and opportunities of sensory learning, research and teaching through film and digital media. The first projects of the Local Spirit Initiative include co-teaching ‘Environmental Film Studies’ a Princeton course designed by Erika Kiss and the development of short research films and other immersive and mixed media teaching aid. Several award-winning film directors, who visited our campus, advise the faculty group’s filmmaking.
Exhibitions
Film Forum
In Development
Zora Neal Hurston Performative Archive
Partners / Platforms
