Materiality in film studies can be about more than celluloid and dusty archives. Emerging from the research training program Configurations of Film, two recent books conceptually engage with material motives of spilling and sticking in order to grasp the complex interminglings that film as a medium, cultural product, social environment and art form creates. Spilling, as a conceptual leitmotif, invites us to approach films as elements of complex, elusive, and ever-changing constellations. The sticky, a corporeal and material force, provides a critical lens for thinking about film and media’s conceptual physical entanglements.

Marie Sophie Beckmann’s „Films That Spill. Beyond the Cinema of Transgression“ (Rutgers University Press, 2025) and the collection „Sticky Films“ (edited by Fadekemi Olawoye, Clara Podlesnigg and Kerim Doğruel; meson press, 2025), not only share a background in Configurations of Film, but also connect through methodological approaches and conceptual strategies of researching film beyond the cinematic dispositif. At this event, we will present our publications, discuss their shared ideas, and think further about the vitality of material motives as methodological and theoretical tools to study film historically and today.