Research in the Department of Film Studies
Contemporary approaches to current and historic areas of Film Studies characterize the dynamic research of staff in the department. Our range of specialism runs from the philosophy of ethics through to historical studies of audiences, from contemporary war films to the legacies of European stars. Our research explores how film is constructed and how it is changing, where it travels to and how it takes effect, drawing on the various cultures of avant-garde, national and blockbuster cinema.
Our research interests broadly fall into the areas of:
European cinema - film as the production of imaginary landscapes: philosophies of space and place: set-design as architecture: European stars and the branding of nations and studios: trans-culturalism, transnationalism and border crossing.
Film History, Archives and Intermediality - film history drawn from various archive research including production histories: film ontology and its changing relationship to other media: memory, photography, iconicity: the historical ethnography of audiences.
Ethics and Ideology - continental philosophies of film: film viewing as ethical witnessing: trauma and war: film as transitional phenomena: embodiment and affect.
Research Projects:
Current research projects in the department funded by the Leverhulme Trust and the Queen Mary Innovation Fund include the forum Living British Cinema dedicated to an exploration of rich and diverse film cultures, and research projects on Jewish Cinema Culture in inter-war Britain, and a study of the work of Powell and Pressburger. The department has an ongoing relationship to film culture in its locality through an involvement with the annual East End Film Festival (in collaboration with the Business School) and local cinemas, and national galleries and institutes within London and further afield.
A forum to explore the many histories of national cinema, including ‘minor’ film cultures existing in British Council Archives, film work in prisons and regional filmmaking in the city of London. LBC creates relationships between scholars, students, directors, film financiers and critics through events, publications and study days.
- Iconic Image Research Group
Exploring the idea of iconicity through still and moving images, the focus of the group is to trace the path of images that have become identifiers of a particular event or period, stabilizers of collective memory and institutionalized in international archives.
- Film Pedagogy
How we learn about film and how we teach film is a question of creative and critical thinking, and film pedagogy is an area that has been developed in the department as an enactment of ideas. Projects such as ‘Film Note’, an online source of film review produced by students, and the Oxford Dictionary of Film Studies, examine the ways in which we discuss, write with and define the terms of our discipline.
Film Studies staff are part of an international culture of research and its dissemination in various forums, from academic conferences through to master-classes and film festival talks. Recent events include Sue Harris’s master-class with director Bertrand Blier, Guy Westwell speaking on the war film at the NFT, Janet Harbord discussing Philippe Parreno at the Serpentine Gallery, Peter Evans interviewing Maribel Verdu at the Spanish Film Festival.
Postgraduate and Postdoctoral Staff:
Leverhulme Early Career Fellow: Dr Gill Toffell
Visiting Postdoctoral Fellows:
Katixa Agirre (University of the Basque Country Bilbao)
Sara Zanatta (Fondazione Museo Storico del Trentino)
Beatriz Pichel (Universidad Autónoma de Madrid)
Visiting doctoral students:
Sofia Bull (University of Stockholm)