The Centre for Film Studies at Queen Mary has research strengths in European cinema (French, Spanish, German and Italian), British cinema, and collaborates with colleagues in the School of History with expertise in Hollywood and British cinema. They also work with colleagues in the School of Languages, Linguistics and Film who teach Russian and Latin-American cinema. The Centre has recently consolidated its commitment to practice-based work by appointing a Technical Director of Studies.

The group and their areas of expertise consists of:

• Peter Evans
  Spanish cinema, especially Buñuel, Almodovar; Hollywood, especially Romantic Comedy, Musicals, Biblical Epics; British cinema, especially Carol Reed
• Sue Harris
  contemporary French cinema; set design in the 1930s European studio system; Bertrand Blier; spectatorship, performance theory
• Alasdair King
  German cinema
• Libby Saxton
  The interactions between film and continental thought, especially philosophies of ethics; post-war French cinema; representations of the Holocaust and the Franco-Algerian War; and the relationship between film, memory and testimony
• Pauline Small
  contemporary Italian cinema; gender representation in Italian heritage cinema; mafia films
• Eugene Doyen
  Technical Director
• Guy Westwell
  The relationship between film and photography and cultural memory within an American context, with a particular focus on representations of the Vietnam War and other traumatic events in American history.
• Charles Drazin
  The British cinema, especially Alexander Korda, the Documentary Movement, Ealing Studios, Free Cinema and the British 'New Wave'; the French cinema.
• Annette Kuhn
  Cultural memory, photography as visual culture, cinema/cultural experience and psychoanalytic theory, and film history.
  

The department runs a taught MA programme and recent PhD topics have included:

• Popular Spanish comedy
• Film adaptations of literary texts
• Representations of Italianness in British cinema
• Arthurian Romance and Film
• Transnational stars in 1950s cinema: France and the USA
• The influence of Japanese animation on the horror film genre
• The relationship between the French and American film industries

The Centre recently inaugurated its new Alfred Hitchcock cinema, where students take classes and have film screenings. We arrange talks by distinguished film specialist guest speakers; past speakers have included Richard Dyer, Douglas Pye, Geoffrey Nowell-Smith, Christine Gledhill, Richard Allen, and Kevin Brownlow. Talks have also been given by directors José Luis Borau, Karel Reisz, Claude Sautet and Jean-Paul Rappeneau, and by Hollywood star Betsy Blair.