Books
2018: Non-Cinema: Global Digital Filmmaking and the Multitude, London: Bloomsbury.
Non-Cinema is an in-depth study of low budget digital filmmaking from around the world, including Afghanistan, Iran, China, the Philippines, France, the UK, the USA, Uruguay and Nigeria. It argues that the ‘poor’ images of low budget cinema are as legitimate as the big budget images of ‘supercinema.’
2013: Supercinema: Film-Philosophy for the Digital Age, Oxford: Berghahn.
The book is a detailed exploration of the digital moving image, locating its place in film history and how film theory can help us to understand it. The book predominantly takes in contemporary special effects movies from around the globe, although it does pay attention to other developments in digital cinema.
2010: Moving People, Moving Images: Cinema and Trafficking in the New Europe, with Dina Iordanova and Leshu Torchin, St Andrews Film Studies.
This book is a collaborative analysis of forced migration and roaming labour throughout Europe and further afield, and as depicted in contemporary cinema. The book comprises three essays and a series of close readings of 15 relevant and recent films.
Edited collections
2012: Deleuze and Film, edited with David Martin-Jones, Edinburgh University Press.
This book involves 12 different chapters exploring the ways in which Gilles Deleuze’s work can influence our understanding of popular cinema from a variety of national contexts and genres from around the world.
Journal special issues
2019: Special Issue: Contemporary Uruguayan Cinemas, with David Martin-Jones and María Soledad Montañez, Studies in Latin American Cinemas., 16:1.
This special issue features essays on the production, distribution and reception of Uruguayan cinema, as well as the analysis of various recent Uruguayan films.
2015: Special Issue (8, Fall) of Frames Cinema Journal on ‘Going Viral: The Changing Faces of (Inter)Media Culture.’
This special issue features essays on various aspects of (new) media culture in the contemporary age.
2012: Special Issue (7:3) of animation: an interdisciplinary journal on Avatar, edited with Jenna Ng.
This special issue features essays by leading scholars of digital effects and animation, writing about Avatar (James Cameron, USA, 2009).
Articles in journals
2019: ‘¡Ataque de pánico!, Federico Alvarez in Hollywood,and the impossibility of Uruguayan Cinema,’Studies in Spanish and Latin American Cinemas, 16:1, pp. 49-71. DOI: doi: 10.1386/slac.16.1.49_1.
An analysis of Fede Álvarez’s films, from his early short ¡Ataque de pánico! through to his Hollywood movies, including The Girl in the Spider’s Web.
2019: ‘Uruguayan Cinema Today: Interviews with Three Uruguayan Directors’ (with María Soledad Montañez and David Martin-Jones), Studies in Spanish and Latin American Cinemas, 16:1, pp. 111-122. DOI: 10.1386/slac.16.1.111_1.
Interviews with Federico Veiroj, Silvana Camors and Guillermo Casanova about filmmaking in contemporary Uruguay (in Spanish).
2019: ‘Introduction: Contemporary Uruguayan Cinemas’ (with David Martin-Jones and María Soledad Montañez), Studies in Spanish and Latin American Cinemas, 16:1, pp. 3-24. DOI: 10.1386/slac.16.1.3_1.
An introductory essay charting the state of contemporary Uruguayan cinema(s).
2019: ‘Conscientious Abjection and Chaosmopolitanism in Khavn de la Cruz’s Ruined Heart,’ Studies in the Humanities, 44/45, pp. 56-73.
A study of recent Philippine movie, Ruined Heart, as considered through the lens of of abjection and cosmopolitanism.
2018 (as Robert Campbell): ‘Drone Film Theory: The Immanentisation of Kinocentrism,’Media Theory, 2:2, http://mediatheoryjournal.org/robert-campbell-drone-film-theory/.
An analysis of drone imagery and its meaning in contemporary moving image culture: drones suggest a desire for humans to separate themselves from the world and from each other, a logic of separation that potentially lies at the heart of all media.
2018: ‘Through a (first) contact lens darkly: Arrival, unreal time and the chthulucene’ (with David H. Fleming), Film-Philosophy, 22:3, pp. 340-363.
This essay combines the philosophies of Gilles Deleuze and JME McTaggart in order to analyse Arrival as a film that offers up a posthuman vision of time and of life on Earth.
2018 (as Robert Campbell): ‘Small Form Films: The (Non-)Cinema of Mike Ott,’ Jump Cut: A Review of Contemporary Media, 58 (Spring), https://www.ejumpcut.org/currentissue/CampbellMikeOtt/index.html.
The first in-depth study of ultra-independent American film director Mike Ott, looking at all of his films from Analog Days, through his Antelope Valley trilogy and up to California Dreams.
2017: ‘Cinema and/as Convergence,’ Special Edition: XX SOCINE, Rebeca: revista brasileira de estudos de cinema e audiovisual, 11/6:1 (January-July), https://doi.org/10.22475/rebeca.v6n1.478.
An essay about the concept of convergence and time in the contemporary digital world, which includes a critique of off-grid fantasy Captain Fantastic.
2017: ‘#firstworldproblems: When Long Films Last Even Longer,’ aniki: Portuguese Journal of the Moving Image, 4:2, pp. 456-470.
An essay that explores the possible meanings not only of long films, but also of long films as they last even longer as a result of a poor internet connection.
2016: ‘Non-cinema: digital, ethics, multitude,’ Film-Philosophy, 20, pp. 104-130.
This essay looks at low-budget digital filmmaking from the Philippines and the USA and proposes that this ‘non-cinema’ constitutes an ethical rebellion against the cinematic values of the contemporary era.
2016: ‘¿En Qué (No) Se Está Convirtiendo El Cine?’ (trans. Nuria Trigo Boix), TRAMA, 16 January.
A Spanish-language translation (with minor changes) of ‘Cinema Cannot Become God,’ as published in La Furia Umana.
2015: ‘What Constitutes a Cinematic Event?’ Panoptikum, 13:20, pp. 118-125.
An essay that compares and contrasts the concept of the event as understood by Gilles Deleuze and Alain Badiou.
2015: ‘Cinema Beside Itself, or Unbecoming Cinema: Enter the Void’ (with David H. Fleming), Film-Philosophy, 19, pp. 124-145.
David Fleming and I consider Gaspar Noé’s Enter the Void as a film that in some senses is unbecoming of cinema, which in turn can be read politically as a film that critiques the cinematic values of the contemporary world.
2015: ‘Apple is not the Only Fruit,’ Frames Cinema Journal, 8 (Fall).
An essay that compares Danny Boyle’s film about the inventor of the iPhone, Steve Jobs, to Sean Baker’s feature film shot with an iPhone, Tangerine.
2015: ‘Introduction: Digital Secrets, Digital Lies,’ Frames Cinema Journal, 8 (Fall).
A short introduction to a special issue of Frames, entitled ‘Going Viral: The Changing Faces of (Inter)Media Culture.’
2015: ‘Politicizing Eye-tracking Studies of Film,’ Refractory: A Journal of Entertainment Media, 25 (7 February).
This essay seeks to eke out the politics in and of ‘scientific’ approaches to film, especially those that involve eye-tracking technology.
2015: ‘A Skeuomorphic Cinema: Film Form, Content and Criticism in the “Post-Analogue” Era’ (With David H. Fleming), The Fibreculture Journal: Digital Media + Networks + Transdisciplinary Critique, 24.
A skeuomorph is something that is new, but which retains the appearance of something old for the sake of not seeming too unfamiliar. David Fleming and I use this as a way of understanding digital cinema.
2015: ‘Cinema Cannot Become God,’ La Furia Umana, 8, April, pp. 52-56.
A brief essay about the cultural domination that the values of cinema seem to enjoy in the contemporary world.
2015: ‘Non-cinema: digital, ethics, multitude’ (translated into Mandarin by Tsai Wen-Shen), ACT, 61 (January), pp. 10-32.
This essay is a Chinese-language version of an essay that appeared in 2016 in Film-Philosophy.
2015: ‘Bringing the past into the present: West of the Tracks as a Deleuzian time-image,’ in Cinema: Journal of Philosophy and the Moving Image, 6, pp. 73-93.
This essay offers up an interpretation of Wang Bing’s monumental West of the Tracks through the lens of the film-philosophy of Gilles Deleuze.
2013: ‘Violence in Extreme Cinema and the Ethics of Spectatorship,’ in Projections: The Journal for Movies and Mind, 7:1 (May), pp. 25-42.
This essay offers up a theory of why spectators are attracted to cinematic violence.
2012: ‘Avatar: stereoscopic cinema, gaseous perception and darkness,’ for the special edition of animation: an interdisciplinary journal on Avatar, 7:3, pp. 259-271.
This essay theorises 3D spectatorship in relation to Avatar.
2012: ‘Avatar: An Introduction’ (with Jenna Ng), for the special edition of animation: an interdisciplinary journal on Avatar, 7:3, pp. 221-225.
This essay gives an overview of Avatar, its production history, and its commercial success, while also introducing essays in the collection.
2012: ‘Monstrous cinema,’ in New Review of Film and Television Studies, 10:2 (June), pp. 409-424.
An essay on Jean-Luc Nancy, cinematic monstration, and recent extreme cinema.
2012: ‘Channel Hopping: Charlotte Rampling in French cinema of the early 2000s,’ in a special edition of Celebrity Studies. on female actors and ageing, edited by Deborah Jermyn, 3:1, pp. 52-63.
This essay looks at the performative aspects of Rampling’s work with Francçois Ozon and others. Reprinted in Female Celebrity and Ageing: Back in the Spotlight, London: Routledge, 2013.
2012: ‘The pre-narrative monstrosity of images: how images demand narrative,’ in a Special Issue of Image [&] Text on reading narrative in the visual, edited by Jonathan Carson and Rosie Miller.
This essay discusses monstration, narration and early silent cinema.
2012: ‘Datamoshing and the Emergence of Digital Complexity from Digital Chaos’ (with Meetali Kutty), in Convergence: The International Journal of Research into New Media Technologies, 18:2, pp. 165-176.
This essay looks at datamoshing and glitch art through the lens of theories of chaos and complexity.
2011: ‘Deterritorialisation and Schizoanalysis in David Fincher’s Fight Club’ (with David H Fleming), Deleuze Studies, 5:2, pp. 275-299.
A Deleuzian interpretation of Fight Club.
2011: ‘Resisting the Psycho-Logic of Intensified Continuity,’ in Projections: The Journal for Movies and Mind, 5:1, pp. 69-86.
This essay looks at recent cognitive approaches to film, suggesting that there is a renewed need for ideological critique in the age of what David Bordwell calls ‘intensified continuity.’
2011: ‘Cease Fire: rethinking Iranian Cinema through its mainstream,’ in Third Text, 25:3, pp. 335-341.
A consideration of Tahmineh Milani’s comedy, which also offers a perspective on the Iranian middle classes that is absent from Iran’s successfully exported art house cinema.
2010: ‘Film in anti-trafficking and anti-slavery campaigns,’ Media Development, 3, pp. 51-54.
A brief essay on how film features in anti-trafficking and anti-slavery campaigns.
2009: ‘Beowulf: the digital monster movie,’ in animation: an interdisciplinary journal, 4:2, pp. 153-168.
This essay theorises motion capture via Henri Bergson’s theory of comedy, while using Beowulf as a template.
2009: ‘It’s a shark-eat-shark world: the ambiguous politics of Steven Spielberg,’ in New Review of Film and Television Studies, 7:1, pp. 13-22.
This essay considers the work of Steven Spielberg as an index of capitalism.
2009: ‘Contemporary Mainstream Cinema Is Good For You: Connections Between Analogue Avant-Garde Film and Today’s Digital Blockbusters’, in Studies in European Cinema, 6:1, pp. 17-30.
This essay compares 1920s surrealist and avant-garde cinema to contemporary French effects movies such as Amélie.
2007: ‘Sabotage or espionage? Transvergence in the works of Luc Besson,’ Studies in French Cinema, 7:2, pp. 93-106.
This essay takes Marcos Novak’s concept of transvergence and uses it as a tool to analyse the œuvre of Luc Besson.
Book chapters
2019: ‘Self-administering the image virus: six months of selfies,’ The Self- Portrait in the Moving Image (eds. Laura Musetta, Muriel Tinel-Temple and Marlène Monteiro), Bern: Peter Lang, pp. 231-253.
This essay involves a critical reflection on the making of my film, Selfie, as well as further thoughts on selfie culture (especially in relation to dating apps).
2018: ‘From Down Terrace to High-Rise: the ‘unreal estate’ cinema of Ben Wheatley,’ Nationalism in Contemporary Western European Cinema (ed. James Harvey), Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 43-61.
This essay considers the feature films of Ben Wheatley from Down Terrace through to Freefire, examining in particular how his films deal with occult themes in order to undermine the concept of private property and ownership.
2018: ‘He(u)retical Film Theory: When Cognitivism Meets Theory,’ The Anthem Handbook of Screen Theory (eds. Tom Conley and Hunter Vaughan), London: Anthem Books, pp. 277-292.
This essay argues for a more experimental understanding of cinema based upon what it can do, as opposed to trying to essentialise what it is via scientific methods. The reason for this is that the latter leads to a minimisation of difference as only certain techniques are considered to be good, while the former gives room for cinema to take on many different guises.
2018: ‘Sparse or Slow: Ozu and Joanna Hogg,’ Reorienting Ozu: A Master and His Influence (ed. Jinhee Choi), Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 269-284.
In this essay, I consider Joanna Hogg’s Unrelated, Archipelago and Exhibition in relation to the work of Japanese master Yasujiro Ozu, suggesting that while his influence is clear on Hogg’s work, Hogg nonetheless demonstrates a more ‘post-human’ perspective on the world than her predecessor.
2018: ‘In Order to See You Must Look Away: Thinking About the Eye,’ Seeing into Screens: Eye Tracking and the Moving Image (eds. Tessa Dwyer, Claire Perkins, Sean Redmond and Jodi Sita), London: Bloomsbury, pp. 15-27.
Here I argue that blinking, sleeping and saccades are essential parts of vision, and that as a result to see is as dependent on looking away/closing one’s eyes as it is to keeping them open. With this in mind, I look at films composed only of still images equally to suggest that vision is based upon a discontinuity of sight and that the human is entangled with what it sees rather than simply an abstracted observer looking at an objective reality from which they are separated.
2016: ‘Michael Winterbottom: A Self-Effacing Auteur?,’ The Global Auteur: Politics and Philosophy in 21st Century Cinema (eds. Seung-hoon Jeong and Jeremi Szaniawski), London: Bloomsbury, pp. 79-94.
An essay about British filmmaker Michael Winterbottom, focusing in particular on his use of digital cameras.
2015: ‘L’Épée de Bois,’ Cinemas of Paris (eds. Dina Iordanova and Jean-Michel Frodon), St Andrews: St Andrews Film Studies, pp. 226-229.
2015: ‘L’Espace St Michel,’ Cinemas of Paris (eds. Dina Iordanova and Jean-Michel Frodon), St Andrews: St Andrews Film Studies, pp. 230-235.
2015: ‘Studio Galande,’ Cinemas of Paris (eds. Dina Iordanova and Jean-Michel Frodon), St Andrews: St Andrews Film Studies, pp. 240-245.
2015: ‘Les 7 Parnassiens,’ Cinemas of Paris (eds. Dina Iordanova and Jean-Michel Frodon), St Andrews: St Andrews Film Studies, pp. 310-315.
2015: ‘Cinéma Chaplin Denfert,’ Cinemas of Paris (eds. Dina Iordanova and Jean-Michel Frodon), St Andrews: St Andrews Film Studies, pp. 320-323.
Essays on various independent cinemas in the world’s most dedicated cinephile city.
2015: ‘Melancholia: The Long, Slow Cinema of Lav Diaz,’ Slow Cinema (eds. Tiago de Luca and Nuno Barradas Jorge), Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, pp. 112-122.
An essay on Philippine filmmaker Lav Diaz and his self-reflexive masterpiece, Melancholia.
2015: ‘Roland Barthes: What Films Show Us and What They Mean,’ Thinking in the Dark: Cinema, Theory, Practice (eds. Murray Pomerance and R. Barton Palmer), New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, pp. 113-124.
An essay that focuses on the use of Roland Barthes’ distinction between denotation and connotation as a tool for analysing films.
2015: ‘The impossibility of passivity: the resurgence of activism in contemporary political cinema,’ Marxism and Film Activism: Screening Alternative Worlds (eds. Ewa Mazierska and Lars Kristensen), Oxford: Berghahn, pp. 145-165.
An analysis of José Padilha’s Brazilian crime film, Elite Squad (Brazil/USA/Argentina, 2007) and Mahamet-Saleh Haroun’s A Screaming Man (France/Belgium/Chad, 2010).
2015: ‘Destroy Visual Pleasure: Cinema, Attention and the Digital Female Body (Or, Angelina Jolie is a Cyborg),’ Feminisms: Diversity, Difference and Multiplicity in Contemporary Film Cultures (eds. Laura Mulvey and Anna Backman Rogers), Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, pp. 54-64.
This essay investigates the political dimensions of cognitive studies of female beauty, using Angelina Jolie as a template.
2015: ‘Eva Green: Indecent Beauty,’ French Cinema in Close-Up: La Vie d’un acteur pour moi (eds. Michaël Abecassis and Marcelline Block), Dublin: Phaeton, pp. 224-226.
2015: ‘Marina Hands: French Actress Anglaise,’ French Cinema in Close-Up: La Vie d’un acteur pour moi (eds. Michaël Abecassis and Marcelline Block), Dublin: Phaeton, pp. 233-235.
Brief star studies of two prominent French actresses Eva Green and Marina Hands.
2015: ‘Zhang Yimou,’ Directory of World Cinema: China 2 (ed. Gary Bettinson), Bristol: Intellect, pp. 83-86.
2015: ‘Kekexili: Mountain Patrol,’ Directory of World Cinema: China 2 (ed. Gary Bettinson), Bristol: Intellect, pp. 136-137.
2015: ‘Still Life,’ Directory of World Cinema: China 2 (ed. Gary Bettinson), Bristol: Intellect, pp. 151-153.
2015: ‘Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon,’ Directory of World Cinema: China 2 (ed. Gary Bettinson), Bristol: Intellect, pp. 222-224.
Short essays on various films and filmmakers from China.
2014: ‘Amateur Digital Filmmaking and Capitalism,’ Marx at the Movies: Revisiting History, Theory and Practice (eds. Ewa Mazierska and Lars Kristensen), Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 198-217.
An essay about the rise and the meaning of amateur film production in the age of the internet.
2014: ‘Value and Violence in Django Unchained,’ Quentin Tarantino’s Django Unchained: The Continuation of Metacinema (ed. Oliver C. Speck), London: Continuum, pp. 161-176.
A Marxist analysis of Quentin Tarantino’s Django Unchained.
2014: ‘Complexity, Simplicity and Digital Narratives,’ Hollywood Puzzle Films (ed. Warren Buckland), London: Routledge, pp. 125-139.
A comparative analysis of Christopher Nolan’s Inception and Abbas Kiarostami’s Five Dedicated to Ozu.
2013: ‘The multitude’s battle for the future: entrepreneurship, The Social Network, and the film industry,’ in Ewa Mazierska (ed.), Work in Cinema: Labour and the Human Condition, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.
This essay addresses the cult of the individual in the cinema (including The Social Network) and in the film industry of the early 2010s, before arguing that both films and the film industry are based upon unrecognized and often unpaid labour.
2013: ‘Digital Cinema,’ in Warren Buckland and Edward Branigan (eds.), Encyclopaedia of Film Theory, London: Routledge.
This article offers an overview of digital cinema.
2013: ‘Minor Cinema,’ in Warren Buckland and Edward Branigan (eds.), Encyclopaedia of Film Theory, London: Routledge.
An overview of minor cinema, particularly Deleuzian approaches thereto.
2013: ‘Movement Image,’ in Warren Buckland and Edward Branigan (eds.), Encyclopaedia of Film Theory, London: Routledge.
An overview of Deleuze’s first Cinema book and responses to it.
2013: ‘Time-Image,’ in Warren Buckland and Edward Branigan (eds.), Encyclopaedia of Film Theory, London: Routledge.
An overview of Deleuze’s second Cinema book and responses to it.
2013: ‘Machinima: cinema in a minor or multitudinous key?’ (with Matthew A Holtmeier), in Jenna Ng (ed.), Understanding Machinima: Essays on Filmmaking in Virtual Worlds, London: Continuum, pp. 3-21.
This essay suggests that machinima is a minor form that helps to express not the people, but the multitude, considering The French Democracy in particular.
2013: ‘Channel Hopping: Charlotte Rampling in French cinema of the early 2000s,’ in Deborah Jermyn (ed.), Female Celebrity and Ageing: Back in the Spotlight, London: Routledge, 2013.
Reprint of an essay published in a special edition of Celebrity Studies on female actors and ageing, edited by Deborah Jermyn, 2012. This essay looks at the performative aspects of Rampling’s work with Francçois Ozon and others.
2012: ‘“Those Men are Not White!”: Neuroscience, digital imagery and colour in O Brother, Where Art Thou?,’ in Sarah Street, Simon Brown and Liz Watkins (eds.), Colour and the Moving Image, Routledge/AFI Film Readers.
This essay uses recent neuroscientific findings to suggest a novel cognitive approach to cinematic colour, which is especially relevant in the digital age where colours regularly are modified.
2012: ‘Has film ever been western?: continuity and the question of building a ‘common’ cinema,’ in Saër Maty Bâ and Will Higbee (eds.), De-Westernizing Film Studies, London: Routledge, 2012, pp. 166-177.
This essay uses recent cognitive findings concerning film spectatorship to argue that cinema is not western, and that it might best be considered – politically, if not historically – as a ‘common.’
2012: ‘Counterfactuals, cruel monsters, and Quentin Tarantino’s Inglourious Basterds,’ in Robert von Dassanowsky (ed.), Quentin Tarantino’s Inglourious Basterds: A Manipulation of Meta-Cinema, London: Continuum, 2012, pp. 247-270.
This essay discusses counterfactual history and cruelty in Inglourious Basterds, arguing for the film not as a fiction, but as a counterfactual machine.
2012: ‘Is acting a form of simulating or being? Acting and mirror neurons,’ in Aaron Taylor (ed.), Theorizing Film Acting, London: Routledge, 2012, pp. 107-119.
This essay uses recent neuroscientific findings to illuminate cinematic empathy from both the spectator’s and the actor’s point of view.
2012: ‘Deleuze and popular Iranian comedy Marmoulak/The Lizard,’ in David Martin-Jones and William Brown (eds.), Deleuze and Film, Edinburgh University Press, 2012, pp. 88-103.
This argues that Marmoulak troubles the distinction between Deleuze’s movement- and time-image categories, while comparing Deleuze’s work with that of Iranian philosopher Abdolkrim Soroush.
2012: ‘Introduction: Deleuze’s World Tour of Cinema’ (with David Martin-Jones), in David Martin-Jones and William Brown (eds.), Deleuze and Film, Edinburgh University Press, 2012, pp. 1-17.
This essay introduces the edited collection and argues that there are many versions of Deleuze circulating in film studies.
2010: ‘The Film Star as Event: Audrey Hepburn,’ in R Barton Palmer (ed.) Larger than Life: Movie Stars of the 1950s, Rutgers University Press, pp. 130-146.
This essay takes Roland Barthes’ suggestion that Audrey Hepburn’s face is an ‘event,’ suggesting that Hepburn might usefully be understood through theories of the virtual.
2010: ‘Country Girls: Jessica Lange and Sissy Spacek,’ in Bob Eberwein (ed.) Acting for America: Movie Stars of the 1980s, Rutgers University Press, pp. 57-76.
This essay provides a consideration of Lange and Spacek as indices of 1980s American political movements, especially their role in promoting rural, and specifically farming, issues.
2009: ‘Lost in transnation,’ in Ruby Cheung and D.H. Fleming (eds.) Cinemas, Identities and Beyond, Cambridge: Cambridge Scholars Press, pp. 16-32.
This essay considers various definitions of the ‘transnational,’ and that the defence of art house cinema is key for the establishment/definition/continuation of a positive transnational cinema.
2009: ‘Not Flagwaving but Flagdrowning, or Postcards from Post-Britain,’ in Robert Murphy (ed.), The British Cinema Book (3rd Edition), London: BFI/Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 408-416.
This essay looks at postnational aspects of British cinema from the 1990s and 2000s.
2009: ‘The Festival Syndrome,’ in Dina Iordanova with Ragan Rhyne (eds.), Film Festival Yearbook 1: The Festival Circuit, St Andrews Film Studies, pp. 216-225.
This essay offers an overview of a symposium on film festivals, while also suggesting that film festivals might best be understood as a ‘syndrome.’
2009: ‘Man Without A Movie Camera – Movies Without Men: Exploring the Post-Humanism of Digital Special Effects,’ in Warren Buckland (ed.), Film Theory and Contemporary Hollywood Movies, London: Routledge, pp. 66-85.
This essay looks at the posthumanist aspects of, and considers a posthumanist theoretical approach to, contemporary Hollywood cinema.
Reviews
2019: Review of Janet Harbord, Ex-Centric Cinema: Giorgio Agamben and Film Archaeology, Film-Philosophy, 23:2, pp. 212-215.
2019: ‘Notes on Creative Practice Research in the Age of Neoliberal Hopelessness, University of Bedfordshire, UK, 10-12 May 2018,’ Cinema: Journal for Philosophy and Moving Image, 10, pp. 199-220.
This review looks at the neoliberalisation of contemporary higher education in the UK, while also offering up a consideration of Thomas Elsaesser’s Sun Island.
2019: Review of Albertine Fox, Godard and sound: acoustic innovation in the late films of Jean-Luc Godard, Studies in European Cinema, DOI: 10.1080/17411548.2019.1580016.
2018: Review of Steven Jacobs, Susan Felleman, Vito Adriaensens and Lisa Colpert, Screening Statues: Sculpture and Cinema, Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television, DOI: 10.1080/01439685.2018.1459024.
2017: ‘Capitulation to Cool? Thoughts on Conferences 2015-2017,’ Cinema: Journal for Philosophy and Moving Image, 8, pp. 174-179.
This review considers the expansion of film practice as part of film studies, suggesting that it is in some senses a pandering to the cosmetic values of neoliberal society.
2017: Review of John Ó Maoilearca, All Thoughts Are Equal: Laruelle and Nonhuman Philosophy, Film-Philosophy, 21:1, pp. 133-137.
2016: Review of Jean-Louis Comolli, Cinema Against Spectacle: Technique and Ideology Revisited (trans. and ed. Daniel Fairfax), New Review of Film and Television Studies, 14:2, pp. 268-273
2016: Review of Anna Backman Rogers, American Independent Cinema: Rites of Passage and the Crisis Image, Film-Philosophy, 19, pp. 177-182.
2015: Review of Isabelle McNeill, Memory and the Moving Image: French Film in the Digital Era, Studies in European Cinema, 12:2, pp. 154-156.
2015: Review of Tanya Horeck and Tina Kendall (eds.), The New Extremism in Cinema: From France to Europe, Studies in European Cinema, 12:2, pp. 156-159.
2015: Review of Tarja Laine, Shame and Desire: Emotion, Intersubjectivity, Cinema, Studies in European Cinema, 12:2, pp. 159-161.
2015: Review of Gabriele Pedullà, In Broad Daylight: Movies and Spectators after the Cinema, Studies in European Cinema, 12:1, pp. 83-85.
2014: Review of Timothy Palmer, Brutal Intimacy: Analyzing Contemporary French Cinema, Quarterly Review of Film & Video, 32, pp. 91-97.
2014: ‘2013: A Slow Year,’ Cinema: Journal for Philosophy and Moving Image, 4:1, pp. 217-223.
This essay reviews the rise of slow cinema studies, especially as manifested across various conferences in 2013.
2013: Review of Thomas Elsaesser and Malte Hagener, Film Theory: An Introduction through the Senses, Studies in European Cinema, 10:2-3, pp. 200-202.
2013: ‘Conference Round-Up Summer 2012,’ in Cinema: Journal for Philosophy and Moving Image, 3:1.
2012: Review of Dina Iordanova and Stuart Cunningham (eds.), Digital Disruption: Cinema Moves On-Line (St Andrews Film Studies 2012), Viewfinder: Moving Image and Sound, Knowledge and Access, 88 (October), p. 27.
2012: Review of Elena del Río, Deleuze and the Cinemas of Performance: The Powers of Affection, in New Review of Film and Television Studies, 11:4.
2012: ‘Review of Film-Philosophy Conference, Liverpool, 6-8 July 2011,’ in Cinema: Journal for Philosophy and Moving Image, 2:1.
This review discusses the differences between film philosophy and film theory.
2010: ‘Cognitive Deleuze: Conference Report on SCSMI Conference, Roanoke, Virginia, 2-5 June 2010, and Deleuze Studies Conference, Amsterdam, 12-14 July 2010,’ in Cinema: Journal for Philosophy and Moving Image, 1:1.
This review points toward the rapprochement between Deleuzian and cognitive approaches to film.
2010: Claiming Interdisciplinary Studies: Review of James Phillips (ed.), Cinematic Thinking: Philosophical Approaches to the New Cinema, in Film-Philosophy, 14:1, pp. 337-349.
This review looks at disciplinarity in contemporary academia.
2009: Review of Dante 01 (Marc Caro, France, 2008) in Science Fiction Film and Television, 2:2, pp. 322-327.
2009: Review of Daniel Shaw, Film and Philosophy: Taking Movies Seriously, in New Review of Film and Television Studies, 7:4, pp. 471-477.
2009: Review of Susan Hayward and Phil Powrie (eds.), The Films of Luc Besson: Master of Spectacle, in Science Fiction Film and Television, 2:2, pp. 295-300.
2009: Review essay of DN Rodowick, The Virtual Life of Film and Garrett Stewart, Framed Time: Toward a Postfilmic Cinema, in New Review of Film and Television Studies, 7:2, pp. 225-236.
This review essay looks at two recent approaches to digital technology and cinema.
2008: Review of Immortel (Ad Vitam) (Enki Bilal, France, 2004), in Science Fiction Film and Television, 1:1, pp. 171-176.
2008: Review of Dorota Ostrowska and Graham Roberts (eds.), European Cinemas in the Television Age, in New Cinemas, 6:3, pp. 153ff.
2007: Review of Warren Buckland, Directed by Steven Spielberg: Poetics of the Contemporary Hollywood Blockbuster, in Film-Philosophy, 11:3, pp. 204-213.
Published Roundtable Discussion
2010: ‘What is Film-Philosophy?’ with Berys Gaut, David Martin-Jones, John Mullarkey and Robert Sinnerbrink, published online with Film-Philosophy.
A discussion of the differences between film-philosophy and film theory.
Guest Blogs
2017: Published peer review of ‘Materialisation, Emotion, & Attention: Tracking Sound’s Perceptual Effects in Film,’ [in]Transition: Journal of Videographic Film and Moving Image Studies, 4:3, http://mediacommons.futureofthebook.org/intransition/2017/09/06/materialis ation-emotion-attention-tracking-sound-s-perceptual-effects-film.
2016: ‘What is Non-Cinema?’ Edinburgh University Press Blog, 24 February.
2015: ‘Mad Ma(r)x: The Furious Return,’ La Furia Umana, 24.
A brief consideration of Mad Max: Fury Road.
2015: ‘Supercinematic Projection: Author Looks toward Future of Film Studies,’ Berghahn Books, 9 March.
2013: ‘On the origin of Supercinema’, for Berghahn Books.
2013: ‘3D cinema is really a 4D cinema,’ for Stereoscopic Media.
2012: ‘Good Art ≠ Moral Art,’ for The Society for Cognitive Studies of the Moving Image.
Film-Essay
2018: ‘The Sexuality of Space: St Mary Magdalen’s Home Movies,’ [in]Transition: Journal of Videographic Film and Moving Image Studies, 4:4, http://mediacommons.futureofthebook.org/intransition/2018/01/10/sexuality-space-st-mary-magdalen-s-home-movies.
This essay-film reworks material from 13 films set at Magdalen College, Oxford, in order to demonstrate how filmmakers from different eras and background repeatedly return to similar themes and ideas – suggesting that the place itself has an identity, and one that in particular is defined by a queer sexuality/sensibility.
2012: ‘Digital Cinema,’ published online on Vimeo and hosted by Film Studies for Free in 2012.
An introductory lecture on digital cinema.
wjrcbrown on film 