Biologist, artist, activist and Leiden alumnus Merijn Tinga supped the river Rijn in 28 days, to gain attention for plastic waste. His journey of more than 1000 kilometers has been captured in the documentary ‘From Source to Sea’, that can be seen on 4 June at 20:50 on National Geographic Channel.

Visual Ethnography graduate Ildikó Plájás received the Best documentary award in the student competition at the international Astra Film Festival in Romania.

If Dutch cinema is examined in academic studies, the focus is usually on pre-war films or on documentaries, but the post-war fiction film has been sporadically addressed.

On some Sunday evenings the NVIC is presenting NVICinema. We bring a varied programme of Dutch or Flemish films, Egyptian classics as well as contemporary Egyptian feature films and short films from young talented directors, all with English subtitles.

The Question of Medium Specificity in Contemporary Moving Images

Leiden University has made history with its many scientific discoveries; a history that is also illustrated in a variety of books and films.

The short documentary film was selected to the short film corner of the Cannes Film Festival.

Do you enjoy a great story? In the Bachelor's programme Film and Literary Studies at Leiden University you study the stories behind the stories. Because what makes a novel fascinating or a horror movie frightening? Study film, literature and media from around the entire world and discover the differences…

The master’s programme in Film and Photographic Studies at Leiden University covers the history and theory of film and photography within the broad context of visual and other media.

This programme video is presented in Dutch

The short documentary film was selected to the short film corner of the Cannes Film Festival.

Are you thinking about studying Film and Photographic Studies? Learn more and watch the videos.

Escritura de Ñuu Dzaui

Show People offers a comprehensive history of the film star from Mary Pickford to Andy Serkis, traversing more than one hundred years and drawing on examples from America, Britain, Europe, Asia and elsewhere.

Lecture, Research Seminar

Promotores: Prof.dr. J. Aarts, Prof.dr. J.M. van Ruitenbeek

The Film and Photographic Studies programme will equip you with a broad and interdisciplinary knowledge of lens-based mediums.

In Film and Video Intermediality, Janna Houwen innovatively rewrites the concept of medium specificity in order to answer the questions “what is meant by video?” and “what is meant by film?”

From Roma standing up for their rights in Ghent, to the comeback of African fashion in Ghana. The documentaries from Visual Ethnography students showcase the beautifully diverse world we live in. On UNESCO Audiovisual Heritage Day, they show why it's so important to document.

The humanities consist of various academic fields. But what is the common ground of all these different academics and students? And why does their work matter so much in today’s world? Watch the trailer of Humans of Humanties, the new documentary film about the Leiden Faculty of Humanities. Will you…

Thomas Mes defended his thesis on 9 January 2018.

The master's specialisation in Visual Ethnography offers students the possibility to graduate by producing their own ethnographic film. The films 'Living Art', by alumna Tina Krüger, and 'Across Gender', by alumna Anouk Houtman, have received two awards.

This week 'Dutch Post-war Fiction Film through a Lens of Psychoanalysis' by Peter Verstraten was published by Amsterdam University Press, the sequel to Humor and Irony in Dutch Post-war Fiction Film from 2016. Each chapter in his 482-page new study begins with a title of Fons Rademakers who made films…

Film and Photographic Studies master’s students Vanessa and Deirdre created a film programme about the Jewish artist Charlotte Salomon for the Jewish Cultural Quarter. Due to the pandemic, they could no longer hold a physical screening and they decided to move their project online.

This research project is supported by an NWO Aspasia grant, DeepDish TV, crowd-sourced funding, and the Democracy and Media Foundation.

Study information

'Don’t Let the sunny weather fool you' a film made by Visual Ethnography alumna Guusje Meeuwissen has been selected for the RAI film festival in London this year. It's a short film about the everyday lives of a farmer and a fisherman in the Philippines, and their capacity to adapt to a changing natural…

On 10 March students of the advanced master's in International Children’s Rights and the Dutch Child Law master's watched the documentary Shadow Game with filmmaker Els van Driel.

Two short documentaries by Till F. Sonnemann highlight the work conducted by Leiden archaeologists on Hispaniola as part of the Nexus1492 project.

From documentaries, zines and exhibitions to a video installation. Students of the Visual Ethnography master's programme pulled out all the stops to finish their studies in a fantastic way. For one year, the 23 students worked on their own multimedia projects. The screening of the projects took place…

For the annual Week of Classics, Dr Marike van Aerde and her team made a documentary about their research project Routes of Exchange, Roots of Connectivity. In the film the team touches upon the interactions of Greeks and Romans with the wider ancient world, ranging from the African kingdom of Aksum…

Haunted Europe offers a comprehensive account of the British and Irish fascination with a Gothic vision of continental Europe, tracing its effect on British intellectual life from the birth of the Gothic novel, to the eve of Brexit, and the symbolic recalibration of the UK’s relationship to mainland…

What moral concerns do people have when they encounter the financial sector in their everyday life? Erik Bähre's ERC consolidator project 'Moralising Misfortune: A comparative anthropology of commercial insurance’ aims to find out. In collaboration with Brechtje Boeke, five short documentaries from…

LENS is engaged in the drawing up a cartography of the mediascape, past and present, researching the dispositifs and ecologies of image production and presentation, which stretch across diverse geo-political areas as well as institutional, discursive and technological fields.

CADS lecturer Sander Hölsgens is one of the initiators of the NWO Smart Culture Project Documenting Complexity (project number CISC.KC.212). This project investigates how and why engaged documentary filmmakers use new technologies in their work. One of the outputs of this project is the series ‘In Whose…

LAPP was invited by the Plastic Soup Surfer to attend the premiere screening of SOURCE 2 SEA, a documentary following the Plastic Soup Surfer on his journey along the Rhine.

Timo Schmidt and Florian Volz, both International Studies students, have travelled the route many refugees took to reach Europe by bike in the summer of 2016. Through crowdfunding, they want to finance their documentary about this journey. With three days to go, they are at 90% of their target amount…

The documentary ‘De Stem van het Kind’ (The Voice of the Child) gives an impressive insight into the work of juvenile court judges. Documentary maker Pieter Fleury, Professor of Children’s Rights Ton Liefaard and juvenile court judge Johan Visser worked together for the past seven years to make the…

More than eighty students of the Honours College track Science & Society completed their thematic courses. Instead of filling out an exam, they presented a documentary or blog series. These new forms of assessments offered a new perspective on topics like homelessness and the use of mobile phones.

The short film Alma & Esperanza , directed by Itandehui Jansen, a PhD candidate (directing supervisor Professor Dr. Kitty Zijlmans) of the Leiden University Academy for Creative and Performing Arts, has been selected to the Short Film Corner of this year’s edition of the Cannes International Film Fe…

The master's specialisation in Visual Ethnography enables you to combine technical mastery of audiovisual production with ethnographic research skills. Your experience ranges from project design to field studies, to scholarly output.

In Shimmering Images, Eliza Steinbock traces how cinema offers alternative ways to understand gender transitions through a specific aesthetics of change.

Humour, science and creativity. During the Humanities Lab Film Festival this came all together in the short films that the students of the Honours College Humanities have made in the last few weeks. “Working together with people of different studies is inspiring.”

Ruben van Gaalen used a very unique approach for a course of the research master Colonial and Global History: instead of writing an essay, he went to Dublin and made a documentary about African rappers in Ireland.

He could also have written a paper for his honours assignment,

How do we define the works of a film director whose films cross many established boundaries at once?

PhD candidate Magda Pucci studied indigenous music in Brazil. She and her group Mawaca travelled through the Amazon and played with peoples there such as the Paiter Suruí, Kayapó, Ikolen-Gavião and the Huni-Kuin. PhD defence on 19 March.