Heide Schlüpmann is professor emerita for film studies at the Institut für Theater-, Film- und Medienwissenschaft in Frankfurt am Main. She studied philosophy under Ernst Bloch and Theodor W. Adorno among others. At the end of the 1970s, she co-founded a work group on national-socialist entertainment and was co-editor of Frauen und Film from 1982 until the late 1990s. In 2000, Schlüpmann participated in founding the Kinothek Asta Nielsen e.V., initiated by Karola Gramann, which led to an ongoing collaborative curational work. She was professor for film studies at the Johann Wolfgang Goethe-Universität in Frankfurt am Main between 1991-2008 and taught as visiting professor at Dartmouth College, in Hanover, New Hampshire.

Among Schlüpmann's research foci are early cinema, film- and cinema theory, as well as sociolocigal, philosophical and political examination of the medium film. The title of her habilitation thesis from 1989 is: Unheimlichkeit des Blicks. Das Drama des frühen deutschen Kinos. Further publications include Öffentliche Intimität. Die Theorie im Kino (2003),Ungeheure Einbildungskraft. Die dunkle Moralität des Kinos (2007), and Das innere Bild. Zu einem verlorenen Begriff der Seele (2015). In addition, she co-edited two volumes on Asta Nielsen with Karola Gramann, Eric de Kuyper, Sabine Nessel and Michael Wedel (2010) and, together with Fabian Tietke, is the editor ofTransito. Elvira Notari – Kino der Passage (2017).