International top performers from both the film industry and science come together in Tallinn

The summit of the international association of film universities organized by the Baltic Film, Media and Arts Institute (BFM) and an innovative research conference combining film and neuroscience will take place at Tallinn University on April 23-26.

The FilmEU_RIT summit and the preceding NeuroCine conference will bring together more than 120 film specialists, lecturers and students in Tallinn to create bridges between film art and neuroscience and to present the final results of pilot projects initiated within the framework of FilmEU's innovation and knowledge transfer activities. According to Teet Teinemaa, BFM film studies lecturer at Tallinn University and head of FilmEU+ Estonia, the aim of the pilot projects presented at the summit is to bring together filmmakers and researchers as well as students from partner universities of the FilmEU network into a common community of researchers and experts. "FilmEU achieved this goal through joint creative research projects, the results of which vary from audiovisual essays to virtual reality environments," explained Teinemaa.

According to Sten Kauber, guest researcher at BFM and chief organizer of the FilmEU summit, a film science event of this scale is extraordinary in Estonia, stressing that such a meeting crystallizes the diversity, innovation and internationality of contemporary film research. "The presentations at the meeting reflect the different roles of film and media arts in society and the value of creative research in their research, development and interpretation," he adds.

A two-day scientific conference focusing on neurocinema before the summit offers an interdisciplinary dimension to the event, using novel methods to study how the human brain interprets narratives. The organizers of the conference, Dr. Pia Tikka and cinematographer and assistant professor of cinematography at BFM Elen Lotman, the conference dedicated to neuroscience before the FilmEU Summit is unique precisely because it combines the best knowledge and the latest research results in two exciting fields. At the conference, you can listen to presentations from both cognitive neuroscience and film research experts. The main speakers are the award-winning filmmaker Karen Pearlman from Macquarie University in Australia, Michael Pauen, philosopher and academic director of the Berlin School of Mind, and neuropsychologist Lauri Nummenmaa, head of the Human Emotion Systems Laboratory of the Turku PET Center and the Psychology Department of the University of Turku.

The conference is supported by the group grant "Cinematic minds behind-the-scenes" (PRG2109) funded by the Estonian Science Agency (2024-2028), FilmEU_RIT, Cilect and the city of Tallinn. The FilmEU_RIT project is financed by the European Union from the Horizon 2020 program.