Reusable and Nonreusable Films: From Ballistic Films to the Encyclopaedia Cinematographica

The film Fracture Phenomena in Glass is a noteworthy case of a film reuse: it was published in the Encyclopaedia Cinematographica (EC) in 1976, bearing the signature E 2355. In this instance, surprisingly, the Institut für den Wissenschaftlichen Film (Institute for Scientific Film [IWF]), which produced, edited, distributed, and archived the EC films, reused ballistic film recordings from World War II. Produced at the Ballistic Institute of the Berlin-Gatow Air War Academy in 1942–1943 under the direction of Hubert Schardin, they were first published in 1944 as C 433 by the National Socialist predecessor institution, the Reich Institute for Film and Images in Science and the Classroom (Reichsanstalt für Film und Bild in Wissenschaft und Unterricht [RWU]). This reuse suggests that at least some of the EC films bear witness to telling discrepancies in political, historical, and epistemological classification within a distinctive worldwide project of postwar visual film research. This essay considers the controversial role of the encyclopedist Gotthard Wolf and the institutional history of the RWU/IWF by looking at examples of the reuse—or nonreuse—of ballistic films and concepts