Emeritus Professor of Cinema Studies
On Friday 6 March I gave a talk at the Brussels Cinematek to promote both my book on the crystal-song (2017) and a collection (2019) edited by Sophie Dufays, Dominique Nasta and Marie Cadalanu, in which I had a chapter on the crystal-song.
The British Association of Film, TV and Screen Studies French and Francophone Special Interest Group supported a one-day symposium on Céline Sciamma’s Bande de filles (Girlhood, 2014) at King’s College London on 8 February 2020. The symposium was organised by Ginette Vindendeau (KCL) and Sue Harris (QMUL). Over 100 participants attended to hear six papers on the film, one of which was mine, on music. There was a lively round table at the end of the conference.
In the first week of October 2019 I gave six lectures on music and film to 60 undergraduates, Masters students, doctoral students and staff of the Department of Film Studies and Audiovisual Culture in Masaryk University, Brno, Czech Republic. I also participated in a round table with doctoral students and staff focusing on doctoral study and publishing practices in the UK.
Konstantinos was one of my Liberal Arts and Sciences students 2016-2019. He graduated with the highest First Class degree (81.3%) in the School of Literature and Languages for 2019. He achieved First Class marks in all of his modules in Final Year, with no mark below 74 and three of his seven modules in the 80s. This was across three distinct disciplines: English Literature, Film Studies and Sociology, which is an outstanding achievement.
Konstantinos’s Dissertation, for which he received a mark of 88%, was a brilliant adaptation analysis of The Virgin Suicides (novel by Jeffrey Eugenides, film by Sophia Coppola) with a particular emphasis on the role of music.
He published his second-year interdisciplinary study for the Liberal Arts and Sciences programme for which he received a mark of 83% ? ‘The Impact of Animal Agriculture on Climate Change: Examining The Awareness Gap Through Media Representations’ ? on the online site Medium.
He has also?published a novel, Old Haven, which is available on Amazon, and writes regularly on music and film for the webzine Our Culture.
Konstantinos is pictured at the University of Surrey graduation with me and his mother, both of us immensely proud of his achievements.
On 11 February 2019 I gave a talk on ‘Cinema and the medical profession’ at a conference in the University of Surrey on ‘Using Stories to Improve Health? Care’. The conference was organised jointly between Surrey, Texas Tech University and the University of Bari in Italy. Its aim was to exchange ideas in how to use the arts and humanities to train health care professionals. My talk was (unusually) focused on anglophone mainstream cinema. Colleagues Peter Barta and Michael Phy gave talks on?M?decin de campagne (Irreplaceable, 2016) and?Hippocrate?(Hippocrates: Diary of a French Doctor, 2014) respectively.
Other speakers from Surrey included Melaine Coward, the Head of the School of Health Sciences , who was also a co-organiser, Cath Taylor, and Richard Lyon. Speakers from the University of Bari included?Carlo Sabb? and Antonio Stramaglia. Other speakers included?Air Commodore Professor Rich Withnall, Head of Research and Clinical Innovation in the Ministry of Defence Royal Centre for Defence Medicine, and?Harold Kin Ming Cheng from the Chinese University of Hong Kong.
On Monday 4 February I gave a talk to Modern Language sixth-formers at Reed’s School on Christophe Barratier’s film?Les Choristes (The Chorus, 2004).
I was the External Examiner for Gemma Edney’s PhD on ‘Sounding girl, girl(y) sounds: Music and Girlhood in Contemporary French Cinema’ in Exeter on 17 December. As Gemma explains on her website, her PhD examines the representation of girlhood in contemporary French films, and asks how the sensations and feelings of girlhood adolescence can be heard, as well as seen, on film. She explores the use of music in a range of contemporary girlhood narratives, arguing that ‘music can allow an additional means of communication with the spectator, and can open avenues of identification between characters and audience members’.
The Internal Examiner was Professor Will Higbee, one of the former General Editors of the journal for which I am the Chief General Editor, Studies in French Cinema.
I was honoured to be one of the panel members examining a thesis by Sabrina Bouarour on the films of Vincente Minnelli and Jacques Demy, entitled ‘Les masculinit?s dans les films musicaux et les m?lodrames de Jacques Demy et Vincente Minnelli’. The supervisor was Laurent Juillier (to my left). Also on the panel were Professor Laura Mason (Johns Hopkins) and Professor Nick Rees-Roberts (Paris 3), whom you can see to the left of Sabrina Bouarour. The viva took place in Paris 3-Sorbonne Nouvelle’s beautiful Maison de la recherche in the Latin Quarter.
Sabrina is also a filmmaker, and is currently working on a documentary entitled?Lights of Baltimore. You can read more about the project here,?and there is also a Facebook page.
I was very pleased to be a speaker at a conference organised in honour of Richard Dyer at the University of Bordeaux-Montaigne.
The three days of the conference covered all of the areas that Richard has worked on. My own contribution focused on songs in the cinema: ‘De l?utopie en-chant?e ? la chanson-cristal dans Call Me by Your Name’.
At the end of the conference Richard was made Doctor Honoris Causa of the university, and gave an oration that was superbly illustrated with clips and screen captures.
I gave a talk (in French) on Truffaut’s?Les 400 coups to a group of sixth-formers studying French at Guildford High School on 28 November 2018. I talked about the context of the New Wave, the structure of the film. We then worked on a sequence from the film so as to practise the use of film language and how to interpret the main themes of the film as treated on the sequence.
