Lorenz Hegel

Lorenz Hegel is a Ph.D. candidate in the combined program of Film & Media Studies and German Studies, after having studied philosophy and literature in Hildesheim, Paris, and Berlin. His dissertation explores aesthetic and media practices that emerged in reaction to revolutionary events, with a focus on early Soviet cinema and the television work of Jean-Luc Godard and Anne-Marie Miéville in the wake of 1968.

Lorenz’ work revolves around questions of ideology and image, affect and reflexivity, critique and propaganda. His research draws on historical materialism and Marxism, the media theories of Bertolt Brecht and Walter Benjamin, and the philosophy of Gilles Deleuze and Jacques Rancière. Further interests include the interrelation of radical cinema, political thought, and practice in the context of anti-colonial and liberation movements. More recently, he has been engaging with the literary work of Peter Weiss and Anna Seghers.

In the spring of 2022, Lorenz is teaching a class on cinema, revolution, and liberation at the University of the Arts in Berlin. He is currently preparing a publication on the dialectic of demystification and construction in the films of Dziga Vertov.