With the transition from celluloid to digital media, the discipline of film history is undergoing a fundamental transformation with far-reaching consequences; where researchers once specialized in specific directors, national traditions, movements, styles or epochs, the field is now expanding to examine the broader history of moving image technologies—their interaction with other domains of rationality (e.g. medicine, warfare) and their transnational circulation.
Discover the MIRL
The Moving Image Research Laboratory (MIRL) explores developments in moving image technologies
and our understanding of the moving body, through a moving image analysis lab for the comparative analysis of
moving images in several media formats, a data processing lab for the digitization of print and visual materials
from the researchers’ specific domains, and a collection of approximately 500 16mm films, ranging from
well-known directors and works to industrial, management, and educational films.

Analysis Lab
Features a Kinoton
35mm/16mm variable
speed film projector
& a Christie HD digital
video projector, which
supports analog &
digital formats.
The screening room
seats 15-20 people.

Data Lab
Features a NexScan
system, a telecine
machine for converting
16mm films to digital,
professional-grade
cameras, an IBM server,
& computers for
processing image,
text, & film documents.

Publications
Research into the
expanded histories
& ecologies of
moving image media
is carried out by
MIRL-affiliated researchers.