Like many other cities in Germany Gießens architecture was largely destroyed during the Second World War and uncountable historic documents were lost in the fires. As it happens there are very few moving pictures of the time before, during or right after the War. “Das Kleine Filmbüro” in the Oberhessisches Museum (municipal museum of Gießen) aims to collect amateur films in order to restore a part of Gießens history. Therefore, it connects the small gauge films as such with the stories and knowledge of their owners. Together with the local community films are being viewed on historical projectors, collected and documented. In many cases they are also being digitized. These films can then be used in the museums exhibitions and will in the future be publicly accessible for the curious and for researchers as well.

 


Mário Jorge Alves

Research Associate
Oberhessische Museum Gießen, Germany

Since his youth he worked about 20 years for a well-known arthouse cinema called Traumstern. After finishing his Bachelor degree in comparative culture and religious studies at Philipps-University Marburg he moved to Vienna (Austria) to become a Fiaker which didn’t last very long. In 2010 he gets the offer to work for the Austrian Filmmuseum in Vienna which he gladly accepted. But after two years he finally decides to move back to Germany to finish his Master’s degree in Cultural- and Social Anthropology, which he received in 2016. After his studies he became the co-founder of the Giennale – a festival for art and culture in Gießen and at the same time he starts as the project manager for “Das Kleine Filmbüro” at the municipal museum of Gießen. Not long after that he gets the job offer to be the museum director at the Museum im Spital Grünberg in 2018. Since 2021 he has been working as a research associate at the Oberhessische Museum Gießen.