Film Cultures cluster investigates film histories, national cinemas, and various aspects of cinema as an institution. The cluster’s expertise lie in specific historical periods (early cinema, Classical Hollywood era, the interwar period, post-9/11 cinema), the cultures and industries of national cinemas (US, British, French, Russian, German, Italian, Yugoslav, Indian and Chinese cinemas), and a range of topics including stars, directors, producers, production companies, independent cinema, archives, production design, representation of war, cinema memory, film festivals, and studios. Lucy Bolton, Ashvin Devasundaram, Sue Harris, Grazia Ingravalle, Annette Kuhn, Mario Slugan, Guy Westwell, and Kiki Tianqi Yu count among the cluster’s members.
Recent work in this cluster includes:
STUDIOTEC: Film Studios: Infrastructure, Culture, Innovation in Britain, France, Germany and Italy, 1930-60 (ERC Advanced Grant funded project, Sue Harris Co-I, 2020-24).
UK Asian Film Festival (Ashvin Devasundaram serves as associate director of the festival and lead of the Emerging Curators Lab).
Cinema Memory and the Digital Archive – 1930s Britain & Beyond (AHRC funded project, Annette Kuhn Co-I, 2019-22).
Ingravalle, Grazia, Film Archives: Early and Silent Film Curatorship from Analog to Digital, Amsterdam University Press, 2023 [forthcoming].
Kuhn, Annette, Exploring Cinema Memory, Thirsty Books, 2023.
Slugan, Mario, and Daniël Biltereyst, eds. New Perspectives on Early Cinema History: Concepts, Approaches, Audiences, Bloomsbury, 2022.
Lebow, Alisa and Kiki Tianqi Yu, eds., “Feminist Approaches in Women’s First-Person Documentaries from East Asia”, Special Issue of Studies in Documentary Film 14.1 (2020)
Westwell, Guy, “Peace cinema: Religious pacifism and anti-war sensibility in Friendly Persuasion (1956)”, Open Screens 2.1 (2019).
Devasundaram, Ashvin, ed. Indian Cinema Beyond Bollywood: The New Independent Cinema Revolution, Routledge, 2018.
Harris, Sue, An American in Paris, BFI, 2015.