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Film Festivals constitute the main institutional alternative to commercially-driven cinema and as such occupy a vitally important part of our cultural heritage. The BFI estimates that `only 7% of all cinema screens are regularly devoted to non-mainstream film', and cites the film festival as an exemplary model for broadening cinema knowledge and education (`New Horizons for UK Film 2012-17'). Film Studies Queen Mary is committed to enhancing a public understanding of obscure and complex film through film festivals, bringing to bear insights born of research including production histories and analytical interpretations of film texts and performances. Collaborating with programmers, curators, local authorities, and diasporic communities, researchers have made significant contributions to festivals including to the founding of two new film festivals (the London Spanish Film Festival 2005 and Cutting East Youth Film Festival 2013), engaging with constituent groups and cultures that are not strongly represented in the UK's commercial film culture.
This case study examines the impact of Catherine Wheatley's research into spectatorship, audiences, and critical contexts through engagement with the popular press and public-facing media institutions. It focuses on Wheatley's work with Sight & Sound, the monthly consumer magazine published by the British Film Institute, which reaches beyond academia to a cine-literate but non-specialist audience. Her research has influenced discussion and criticism of cinema for a large, interested cine-enthusiastic audience as well as contributing to broader public debate and cultural discussion of cinema through mass-media appearances. She has also judged a competition for budding female critics, encouraging more women to write thoughtfully on film, and nurturing a new generation of women critics through which her research has been able to influence the practice of film criticism more widely.
Research by film specialists in Modern Languages (ML) at the University of Exeter promotes the artistic value, diversity and continuing social, cultural and political relevance of European cinema to a variety of audiences in the UK and abroad. Their research has advanced community cohesion through memories of cinema-going (impact 1), informed the teaching of European cinema in secondary schools and HE (impact 2) and enhanced cultural life, promoting public appreciation of European cinema nationally and internationally (impact 3). This has been achieved through contributing to online archival studies of cinema audiences, participation in film festivals, introductions to film screenings, public lectures and DVD commentaries.
Dr Julie Brown's research on the sounds of `silent film' exhibition in Britain has had an impact well beyond academia. Her collaborations with film festivals and major film venues plus public lectures have brought about an enhanced public awareness of a lost media art. Through a practitioner/academic network and via practice-based activities involving professional musicians she has had a direct impact on musical practice, and also brought significant performances to the general public in well-attended public events and film festivals at major cinema venues in both Edinburgh and London. Her work has led to enhanced public understanding of the history of the sonic dimension of `silent cinema' in Britain.
Professor Maria Wyke's research on representations of classical antiquity on film has had significant influence on public access to and understanding of antiquity in silent cinema, both nationally and internationally, through a series of public screenings, film festivals and broadcasts. Her research has influenced the curation, restoration and exhibition of such films by national archives (such as the British Film Institute) as part of the cultural heritage of Europe and the USA. It has also led to the development of `antiquity on film' as an established course in universities in the UK, the USA and Australia.
Deriving from Brady's research on modernist cinema, and Carter's on film reception, the impact focuses on the development of UK reception contexts for German-language film. Both researchers have long worked to enhance public understanding of German-language cinema through curatorship, film talks, and forms of intercultural mediation including translation and interpreting. Since 2011-12, work has focused on creating a sustainable national initiative that translates public engagement into audience impact. The key innovation here is the German Screen Studies Network, a forum for public debate on and promotion of German-language film. Chief beneficiaries are German cinema enthusiasts, cultural partners and collaborating institutions.
Hughes' impact arises from his music for films without sound, which has rendered historically important silent films, and more recent silent film formats, accessible to contemporary audiences. Critics, programmers and broadcasters have all recognised this impact in their commissions and programming of Hughes' scores, and Hughes' work has also impacted upon the way in which museum curators display film and other archival materials. The films include commercial DVD releases of classic silent films by Sergei Eisenstein and Yasujiro Ozu, music for Joris Ivens' film Regen (1929), music for a new film by photographer Sophie Rickett, and music for a documentary image sequence of photographs from the Imperial War Museum archive.
Research on world cinema at Durham University has led to collaboration with filmmakers, cinemas and film festivals regionally and internationally. Durham academics have assisted regional organisations to bring major figures of international independent cinema to North East England, in order to showcase work which would not normally achieve wide exposure, and to enhance public understanding of foreign film, culture and language. In doing so, they have helped those organisations to meet their own institutional objectives. Internationally, Durham research has led to jury membership at a film festival whose mission is to raise the profile of independent filmmaking in Ibero-America, and to provide financial support to encourage further film production. This participation has also led to changes in the festival's practice, in the form of increased involvement of jury members with an academic background.
Research insights from Oxford Brookes University's Dr Daniela Treveri-Gennari on the practice of cinema-going in 1950s Italy has raised public awareness of the importance of autobiographical memories in the elderly as well as actively involved the elderly in reconstructing the history of an important time in Italian film industry. These benefits of the project were achieved through innovative British Academy funded research-led collaborations between Dr Daniela Treveri-Gennari (Oxford Brookes University) and colleagues at Exeter and Bristol Universities, working with Memoro (a non-profit initiative dedicated since 2007 to divulgate memories of people born before 1940), Rome City Council and the University of the Third Age. Dr Trevari-Gennari has joined with non-profit organisations to create a full map of post-war Italian cinema which includes: oral history of cinema-going; programming dataset; the first topographical charting of cinemas; and the first extensive reviews of popular press of the time.
This case study refers to the impact of the work of one member of the submitting unit. The assertion is that the work of Zubillaga has had impact on civil society, cultural life and public discourse. It has: illuminated a repository of cultural capital (through archival research) and interrogated cultural values (specific to a Latin American context) enriched the imaginations of those who have viewed his films; enhanced sensibilities with regard to the cultural themes they explore; and extended the range and improved the quality of evidence, argument and expression to enhance public understanding of Venezuelan and more broadly Latin American cultural and political memory.