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Between Aspiration and Reality: Folklore Film Work in Times of Upheaval

This essay reconstructs the origins of the film Bird-Song Contest with Chaffinches in the Western Harz Mountains (1991), a contribution to the eight-part series “Lower Saxonian Folklore Films” produced by the Göttingen Institute for Scientific Film (IWF). Besides conserving the cultural heritage of Lower Saxony, another aim of the film series was to reform the IWF’s understanding of folklore film. From the mid-1980s onward, scholars had criticized IWF films for their positivist character and argued that IWF film work should engage more with the discourses of university folklore studies. By outlining Bird-Song Contest’s genesis, from draft to revision and the finished version of the narration, this essay demonstrates how strongly institutions can act as control systems that, among other things, resist external influences.