In 1956 the Institute for Academic Film (IWF) was founded in Göttingen. Its mission statement was to act as a place where films could be made available as an instrument for research and teaching. Although the institute demonstrated historical continuity with forerunner institutions founded in the 1930s, the IWF considered itself to be politically and artistically neutral. A very similar story can be told of the creation of the Austrian Institute for Academic Film (ÖWF) in Vienna in the 1960s. German and Austrian academics, including Konrad Lorenz and Irenäus Eibl-Eibesfeld, were involved in founding both institutions. The project itself deals with the history of scientific documentary films and considers in particular the aspect of how relevant the collection and archiving of film material is.

Anja Sattelmacher is doing her post-doctorate studies at the Berlin Center for the History of Knowledge (TU Berlin) and is currently working on a project about scientific documentary films in the 1960s and 1970s. After many years spent working as a research fellow at the chair of the History of Knowledge at the Humboldt University of Berlin’s Institute for Historical Studies, she received her doctorate in the History of Knowledge at the same institute in 2017. The title of her thesis was A history of knowledge of mathematical models 1800-1900. While working on her doctorate, she lectured at the Sorbonne University in Paris and also did a pre-doctoral fellowship at the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science. She completed her degree program in European Media Culture in Weimar and Lyon, followed by a Master in Museum Studies at the Macquarie University Sydney, Australia.