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This thesis is a reappraisal of West African filmmaking as an exemplary arena of African development after the independences. Combining historiographic reconstruction (histories of film production, distribution, and exhibition), film analysis, and critical theory, it highlights how West African filmmakers variously resisted "development" both as a set of modernising policies-whether promulgated by the developmental state or the institutions of development aid-and a wider framework of rationality. Though in essence a historiographic study, this thesis holds critical insights for today: Tracing and comparing the careers of Ola Balogun (Nigeria), Med Hondo (Mauritania/France), and Moustapha Alassane (Niger), it renders their respective practices as so many instances of anti-systemic worldmaking. The first of the three main chapters (4-6) centres on Balogun's model of cinematic indigenisation, which aimed to reactivate lost or suppressed potentials of development inherent in African media environments through an equitable exchange with the Western technology of cinema. Attempting to build a national popular cinema befitting a (re)unified Nigeria, Balogun instead improvised a minor moving image practice whose transregional mode of production and distribution signally escaped the writ of the nation, pointing us to post-statist futures. The second chapter (5) considers Hondo's migrant practice as part of the wider struggle over Africa's forms of circulation. Following Hondo's transnational activities as film producer and distributor, I offer a reading of African cinema as tied into an unequally shared history of "world-cinema," arguing that Hondo's proudly "dependent" practice continually charted new routes of escape. The third of the main chapters (6) considers the emergence of Nigerien cinema from the institutional matrix of French anthropology and development aid (coopération), which both made possible and limited the possibilities of filmmaking in the former French colony. Reconstructing Alassane's struggle for self-determined development across the fields of animation and ethnography, I argue that, rather than attain autonomy, his practice at every turn elaborated new relations of interdependence. In conclusion (7), I contend that alongside alternative developmental trajectories, African post-independence cinemas also proposed a more fundamental critique of development as the "Western culture-systemic telos" (Sylvia Wynter) of global capitalist modernity.

Franchise Aesthetics: Looking at Hybrid Live-Action/Animated Images explores the connections between hybrid imagery - defined as combinations of live-action imagery and animation techniques, recorded images and process of digital manipulation - and the media-epistemological formations that inform everyday life amidst the ever-intensifying use of hybrid techniques throughout visual culture. I examine a range of hybrid procedures from the perspective of their impact on our mediated engagement with the past, our spatial and temporal experience, and the ways we envision the future. This perspective significantly extends existing ways of thinking about hybrid imagery and addresses the urgent problem of how to account for hybrid processes as they become increasingly ubiquitous, yet increasingly invisible. Chapter one argues that digital colourisation can be implicated in the re-shaping of our access to the past, as exemplified by Peter Jackson's They Shall Not Grow Old (2018). Investigating hologram effects in science-fiction texts such as Pacific Rim: Uprising (2018), chapter two positions digital compositing as inculcating a new logic of onscreen space which impacts our psychophysiological experience of space. Chapter three examines the ways in which digitally manipulated durations - such as the impossibly extended takes of recent action cinema - have a temporalising effect that informs our experience of passing time. Chapter four investigates computer-animation's incorporation of the epistemological routines of analogue media and puts texts like the LEGO Movie franchise (2014-) in a quasi-causal chain with the material culture of tomorrow. Unifying these themes of time and space, past and future, my concept of franchise aesthetics highlights the instrumental qualities of hybrid images within an hyper-financialised capital-intensive visual culture. Hybrid techniques prefigure, catalyse and normalise the ongoing reconstitution of subjective experience within, and on behalf of, digital capitalism. Offering a critique of the instrumental qualities of hybridity, franchise aesthetics aims to illuminate and inhibit the degree to which hybrid images intersect with and over-determine the structures of feeling that are characteristic of contemporary experience.

The Italian giallo film was a type of thriller that was produced in huge numbers between the early 1960s and the late 1980s. This thesis contributes to recent scholarly attempts to situate the giallo within its socio-cultural historical context but resists the critical tendency to read these films as passive and transparent reflections of social attitudes in post-war Italy. Rather, I attend concretely to the form of these films and, specifically, to their critically neglected sound designs. I argue that the giallo's voice tracks were conditioned by the commercial imperatives of Italy's post-war popular film industry and that these commercial imperatives were in turn shaped by wider social, economic and political phenomena. By theorising the voice as a mediator between the giallo text and its industrial and social contexts, I show that these films both registered and reified social change. Chapter 1 demonstrates that the anonymous narrator of Mario Bava's The Girl Who Knew Too Much (1963) adopts a range of sonorous modes throughout the film. Each of these sonorous modes invokes a specific set of intertexts which are vital to tracing both the giallo's cultural origins and the increasingly globalised socio- cultural landscape from which it emerged. This chapter then shows that Dario Argento's The Bird with the Crystal Plumage (1970) uses the model of the cinematic voice-over to explore the subjective experience of urban space in post-war Italy. The film suggests that by 1970 the ability to vocally 'narrate' and thus control space had become a fundamental assumption of the modern, cosmopolitan subject. Chapter 2 analyses Lucio Fulci's Don't Torture a Duckling (1972) and Sergio Martino's Torso (1973). Both films draw on longstanding Italian cultural stereotypes to pitch the silence of the rural against the vocality of the urban. The films use silence and the voice as 'cartographic' tools to delineate the profound socio-economic divisions between Italy's rural South and its more urban North, but they also illustrate the giallo's underlying affinities with its silent cinema ancestors and so challenge the assumed temporal borders between cinematic eras. Chapter 3 argues that Argento's Tenebrae (1982) and Fulci's The New York Ripper (1982) variously mimic the vocal aesthetics of television. These films lay bare both the increasing dominance of the Italian cultural landscape by imported commercial television in the 1980s and the neoliberal economic project that underpinned that trend. Ultimately, they question the stability of the nation itself, precisely because the voice - now fractured across a global mediascape - is unable to signal national specificity.

This thesis is a highly original, philosophical study in two parts. The first part is a film titled 'What's special about me?', made with two young deaf boys. The film was shot, on small hand-held devices by the author and the boys themselves. In the film, the boys talk about their lives and experiences. The film does not, however, make an empirical contribution to the thesis. It is there to enable a philosophical argument to be made about the educative potentialities of film. The second part of the thesis is a written study. The opening chapter of the written part of the thesis draws upon the current literature on deafness to describe the young deaf experience, particularly in schools. The second chapter turns away from traditional narrative methodology. It takes an unusual turn to argue for a philosophical approach that is best suited to reaching a philosophical understanding of the three key concepts of accounting, translation, and voice, in relation to the stories of young deaf people on film. The third chapter provides an explanation of these three key philosophical concepts, drawing upon the works of the 19th century Transcendentalist philosopher, Henry David Thoreau, and the work of the 20th century ordinary language philosopher, Stanley Cavell. The fourth chapter argues that the disruptive nature of film is at the heart of what makes film educative, in a perfectionist way, as opposed to educational. The penultimate chapter provides a reading of the film, offering a richly philosophical and original reading of the film through dialogue. The final chapter begins by making new claims for the understanding of the philosophical notions of accounting, translation, and voice in relation to the film. It then goes on to make claims upon the communities involved with young deaf people, and the deaf community itself.

This thesis offers an ethnographic account of how art cinema culture is produced in China since the turn of twenty-first century. With an underdeveloped art cinema infrastructure and the endurance of forceful Party-state control over public cinematic spaces, there have emerged numerous individuals and organisations taking part in circulating the information and appreciation of the art of film through a number of different alternative paths and networks. This thesis scrutinises the role of the intermediary practitioners - particularly those involved in independent exhibition, internet criticism and underground distribution - and how they think about cinema, negotiate judgement and appreciation, and construct a discourse of value and taste. It is argued that, although their motivation was derived from a cinephilia seeking to forge an alternative mode of distribution and reception, the 'new' cinema culture they have produced simultaneously negotiates a subtly complicit relationship with authoritative and market forces. Their cultural practices and engagement oscillates between the status of independence and autonomy, a rejection of cultural homogeneity and monopolisation, and culture as promotion that accrues a public image and recognition. Moreover, involved in diversified practices and taste formation, the intermediary practitioners have also sought to produce a new form of legitimacy in reference to cultural value and judgement. To attain their legitimacy, they have sought to constitute a coordinated and interrelated network in the site of art cinema. The network is manifested - its mode of operation explicitly - as part of the art film culture in a way that represents the larger spectrum of socio-cultural hierarchy in contemporary Chinese culture and society.

This thesis concerns landscape, film and their connections. I contend that landscape emerges through film, not because of film's reanimation of past events, but because it itself is landscape, is made from the stuff of landscape itself. While landscape is often connected with backdrop, painting, scenery, the Picturesque, countryside, tourism or views, my focus is on how, when we deal with film, we deal with landscape itself. I explore landscape therefore not as re-presentations of received, ocularcentric, idealised landscapes, but consider its material constituents with whom the camera and operator interacted. I examine a corpus of non-fiction films (best described as "useful cinema" - see Acland and Wasson 2011) from two archives, both housed in national libraries: the Moving Image Archive at the National Library of Scotland and a subset of films archived in the National Library of Sweden. These films do not always make landscape their explicit subject or object. Rather, they register landscape's emergence in the course of their various official purposes, and underscore that filmmaking is practiced amongst the landscape. The camera and its operator interact as landscape objects amongst their fellow objects. With these films I tackle three themes in a sequence of chapters: Dwelling; Ways; and Objects. The trajectory that unfolds in these chapters concerns landscape as material, actual, definitive - not locked away in idealised impressions of the real thing with words, paint or postcards. With dwelling I describe humans' relationship to landscape. I highlight different interactions between humans and their fellow landscape constituents, known as dwelling acts. I argue that one such act is filmmaking itself, that place emerges only within dwelling and that the films' have their ultimate ties to landscape through dwelling. Ways link landscape objects together, convey objects amongst the landscape and draw in objects to them. I show how they pervade and condition landscape as hyperobjects (Morton 2013), such as rivers, paths, roads and invisible routes. I let the camera become a talisman that experiences and demonstrates all these three aspects for itself. It reveals how entities only ever encounter a minute part of a way at any time and that ways are instrumental on forming and reforming their fellow landscape objects. Objects, three in particular, feature as examples of particular objects familiar to all readers: water, trees and rock. Whilst each is unique and interacts with other objects, consistent with their own qualities, I point out they also share a structuring role in common. They undergird and give shape to other landscape entities. The films in this chapter show the different processes and instrumental roles of these objects. With this, I argue that landscape cannot be reduced to intangible, idealised abstractions. Landscape has its basis in material actuality, where real objects constantly collide that make and re-make it. The thesis therefore captures how landscape emerges through film via a narrowing field, from human involvement in dwelling, through ways, to more specific objects. I show how landscape emerges, firstly, through the camera and its operator's interactions with the objects they encounter and record at the time. Secondly, I explore how landscape also emerges through film itself (each film frame, the film strip, the final edited film object). Here, filmic landscape is made out of actual landscape, its raw material, emerging or appearing when enabled to play its series of consecutively arranged images. If film can indeed be landscape, then the relationship between landscape and film inheres in, is native to, the object itself. This possibility simultaneously questions how we might think about film and challenges us to re-evaluate what the object we deal with is when it comes to film.

This research engages the Colonial Film Unit (CFU), and its history as the propaganda arm of the British Empire, to expose how the visioning technology of cinema and the archivisation of the CFU's materials fuel the transformation of a racist colonial imaginary to fixed truths of the colonial black subject. I argue that this imaginary exists within the epistemological formation referred to as Colonial Thought. To combat this several theoretical strategies have emerged in archival studies such as reading against the grain, auto ethnography or critical fabulation, all of which have influenced moving image practices. However there remain ethical questions, in terms of whether these methodologies sufficiently exist outside of the very knowledge systems that create totalizing and racist understandings of blackness. This research develops and deploys critical proximity; a methodology that embraces illegitimate forms, outside the bounds of Colonial Thought, to transfigure colonial moving images and produce audiovisual works that challenge hegemonic ways of knowing.

I am an artist-filmmaker working in, and against, the Brechtian tradition. My practice experiments with ways to repurpose the alienation technique, the Verfremdungseffeckt (v-effekt), challenging the limitations of the continued use of formal critical methods in the Brechtian tradition. For this reason, my films have incorporated various non-Brechtian techniques to both supplement and subvert the assumptions of Brechtian theory. This thesis interrogates traditional Brechtian alienation techniques such as non-diegetic sound in film, disjointed or displaced props, and nonAristotelian narrative techniques. My interrogation of alienation extends it from a set of techniques used to construct a critical subject for the theatre to enable a rethinking of how critical subjectivity can be repurposed to other areas of research. These critical subjects are understood through reflections on psychology (neurodivergency), psychoanalysis (desire, and gaze), political philosophy (alienation), feminism (performativity, intersectionality, and language), cultural tropes (madness), and literary criticism (nonsense). All of these topics are examined insofar as they are expressed in film. Subsequently, moving in an experimental and exploratory way from the formal use of Brechtian methods towards an investigation into artistic techniques centred upon alienated or imaginative realms, this thesis investigates several new ways of approaching Brechtian techniques - and thus multiple ways of rethinking Brecht. For instance, I have looked at feminist methods of representation that acknowledge Butlerian ideas of subjectivity developed since Brecht's era. These strategies also draw on JJ Lecercle's theory of nonsense. This practice-centred Ph.D. explores ways in which Brechtian techniques can be applied and interrogated in new ways to create a novel language of alienated art. The investigation embraces alienated working methods which emerge through Brecht's more formal techniques to create a resistant critical method. Each film is therefore conceived as an attempt to reanimate Brechtian film for the twenty-first century, and, also, as an exit from his ideas.

This thesis integrates theology, philosophy, and film studies in a theological analysis of the filmography of Belgian filmmakers Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne. I propose that the Dardenne brothers create post-secular cinematic parables which may evoke theological and ethical responses in audiences' imaginations through a distinct filmmaking style I call "transcendent realism." In Part I, I outline a method for theological interpretations of cinema. Chapter 1 draws from the fields of theology, philosophy, and film theory in order to propose a dynamic interdisciplinary approach for greater appreciation of the Dardennes' "post-secular" cinema. Chapter 2 presents an original phenomenological hermeneutic for cinema based on philosopher Paul Ricoeur's description of "parable" and his concepts regarding the world behind, of, and in front of the film. I then apply this Ricoeurian parabolic hermeneutic to the Dardennes' filmography in Part II. Chapter 3 attends to the world behind the films: the Dardennes' biography, their early films, and Luc's philosophical and theological ideas found in his writings. I give particular attention to the apparent influence of philosopher Ernst Bloch on the Dardennes. Chapter 4 addresses the world of the films through close formal analysis of 'The Son' (2002), 'The Kid with a Bike' (2011), and 'Young Ahmed' (2019); I outline the distinctive traits of the Dardennes' transcendent realism. Chapter 5 explores the world in front of the films-that is, how the Dardennes' parables may reorient audiences' imaginations through affective states and cinematic ethics. I demonstrate three Dardennean theo-ethical themes through pairings of the brothers' six remaining major films. In the conclusion, I suggest that the Dardennes' cinematic parables are doing theology, what I call "theocinematics".

Cinema history is strewn with moments of significant upheaval inextricably tied to the ontological evolution of the medium. Reappraising how we have defined and discussed cinema reveals a gradual process of growth often fraught with both anxiety and optimism. However, cinema's latest technological advancement appears to have generated particularly vociferous discussion. This thesis re-assesses the perceived threat of digitisation to understand what exactly sets it apart from those preceding it. The research considers cinema's latest mutation by placing George Lucas at its core. Although he is a significant figure in cinema history, critical studies of Lucas are dominated by Star Wars, a topic which overshadows retrospective discussions about the wider legacy of his career. As such, I seek to build upon the paucity of material focusing on his role as figurehead of the digital filmmaking revolution. I cite a range of frequently overlooked and underappreciated primary sources like interviews and testimonies in order to construct a framework within which the subsequent analysis operates. This Lucas-centric approach offers a unique perspective on the digital cinema debate by directly engaging with one of its most vocal proponents. The first core research question queries why the digital turn has generated such widespread apprehension for the future of cinema. In order to determine the extent of his influence, it then considers the role Lucas played in pioneering the digital filmmaking technology which has precipitated the digital turn. The thesis then questions how this technology has facilitated the broader democratisation of filmmaking, as well as its wider effects, before finally exploring how the digital turn has affected the use of paratextual material in both the narrative and promotional extrusion of the film text.

I am a visual artist who has been making film and videos since completing a Masters of Fine Arts in Moving Image at California Institute of the Arts (CalArts) in 2002. I situate my practice amongst Experimental and Avant-Garde filmmakers and visual artists, however, unlike many of them I work with narrative, humour and specifically play with Hispanic American themes and aesthetics. This commentary focuses on four of my films made in the last ten years: Chica Pop (2010), Loin, Encore Plus Loin (Further, Even Further Away) (2016), La Puta, La Santa y La Viuda (The Whore, the Saint and the Widow) (2018) and Politics and Eggs (2019). I write, direct, perform and edit my own work with very limited external funds. I make low budget films, shot at home or in the street, using myself, friends and family as actors. This is done in combination with imagery obtained from the internet which I alter in post-production in order to create artisanal animations and video collages. This purposeful artisanal approach to animation, video-collage, rough sound and image treatment helps me to position my work in an ironic confrontation with mainstream cinema and in affiliation with avant-garde / experimental filmmaking and earlier Counter Cinema. My work draws from my familial experience of living in exile. My parents were exiled from Chile during Pinochet's dictatorship (1973-1989). My father, Percy Matas is also a filmmaker and together with Raul Ruiz made a series of films about the Chilean exile in France (1973-1978). These films were performed and made by Chilean exiles and their families and became an historical document of Chilean exile in France during the 1970s. This approach to making film in the first person greatly influenced my own practice as it made me aware of the politics of selfrepresentation. Self- representation is at the core of my work, however, through this PhD research I have found many other unsuspected connections between my films that encompass the modes of production, including humour, post-production techniques, Hispanic American themes and aesthetics. I have realized how my experience of exile is always present in my films together with issues of cultural identity, displacement and gender. Analysing my films retrospectively has helped me to recognize the continuity and progression in my work, providing me with a clearer idea of where my practice needs to go in the future. The analysis of these four films serves as a platform from where to engage in a broader discussion about self- representation in film. My intention to underscore connections between the personal experience and politics represents an example of how self-representation can still stablish the personal as political in film. Reclaiming self-representation as a powerful political tool even in our time of social media's exaltation of the visual, the personal still remains political.

This thesis contributes to the interdisciplinary study of theology and film. It recognises that the prevailing methodologies in this study seldom prioritise questions about the formal properties of cinema as an artistic medium, and so overlook several productive and substantial questions for the theologian: What theology and theological practice does cinematic art give rise to? What are the perceptual and affective potentials of film for theology, and what, if anything, is theological about the cinematic medium itself? In condensing and synthesising these inquiries, I offer this central research question: What is the theological power of film? By prioritising these questions, this thesis engages in theological-cinematic analysis which aims to render a properly theological account of the medium of film. This account constitutes a shift away from the 'textual' analysis of film, towards an 'experiential' analysis of the art form itself. As such, this is not a matter of 'applying' theological concepts to film. Rather, 'the theological power of film' designates the medium's power to express, signify, prime and perform certain conceptual and theological practices. In this way, the film experience is the proper subject of an inquiry into the theological power of film, and so this thesis adopts a phenomenological method, drawing on a major project of recent cinematic theory: film-phenomenology. Foregrounding the body in the film experience through the Merleau-Pontian concept of the body-subject, I argue for an understanding of cinema as a haptic and somatic medium of perception-cum-expression. The embodied nature of the art form also reveals the distinct temporality of film, for our embodied being in the world is indissolubly connected with our being in time. The films and writings of Andrei Tarkovsky emerge as the fulcrum of my response, as his work becomes a singular illustration of the theological power of film.

This PhD thesis provides a sound-driven analysis of Alfonso Cuarón's approach to filmmaking, arguing that his film style, which the author calls immersive continuity, stands out as the most effective method for transporting the spectator into the film's narrative world. Grounded on the spatiotemporal continuity of the long take, Cuarón was able to exploit the three-dimensional capabilities of Dolby's most advanced sonic platform, Dolby Atmos; thereby, making the most of the cinematic apparatus, his immersive film style facilitates the occurrence of highly affective 'out of body' audio-visual experiences, the closest that for now we can get to the mythical total cinema. Moreover, apart from analysing Cuarón's audio-visual aesthetics and their potential spectatorial effects, this thesis investigates the creative practice behind the sound design of Roma, whose soundtrack was conceived as a Dolby Atmos mix from the very beginning. Based on information provided by some of the key practitioners involved on the creation of the soundtrack, the author determines the creative strategies and workflows that were put in practice for the creation of what is perhaps the most realistic audio work in cinema history, undoubtedly the quintessential example of an object-based Atmos mix. Furthermore, based on an extensive observation of present-day cinema, the author argues that there is an ongoing stylistic turn towards a broader application of 3-D sound, which is evidenced not only in Gravity and Roma, but in a number of recent mainstream productions, among which stand out highly regarded directors such as Alejandro González Iñárritu, Bong Joon-ho, Darren Aronofsky, among others. Finally, aiming to offer insights on how to create films with 3-D sound, this thesis concludes with a practical proposal in the form of guidelines and suggestions that could lead filmmakers to plan and design their films with three-dimensional sound in mind. A 3-D storyboarding methodology is presented, which is put in practice to visualise the distribution of images and sounds in the space of exhibition.

This thesis focuses on bodies, taste and pleasures in the films of John Waters. Through a textual analysis of the film texts, this thesis studies the bodies on screen, the cultural ramifications of their taste, and the place they occupy in the social world. I argue that Waters' aesthetics of bad taste contain a joyous world of visual excess that upends hierarchies of distinction, parodying the categories of gender, race and class, and celebrating the dethroning of seriousness (Sontag 2018). Building on the work of Michel Foucault, Judith Butler and Pierre Bourdieu, I read the body as a site imprinted by power and knowledge, regulated by gender and taste. By placing the body at the centre, I aim to re-evaluate the critical consensus around Waters' cinema. 'Pope of Trash', 'Prince of Puke', and 'People's Pervert' are some of the titles awarded to filmmaker John Waters, whose career has been studied as the paradigm of the cult auteur. This thesis aims to further the discussion of Waters' cinema beyond the impasse of transgression. By granting similar importance to Waters' underground, independent and Hollywood years, I expose the limits of the domestication discourse, which suggests that his late-career lost edge and got assimilated by the system (Levy 2015, Moon and Sedgwick 1994). Scrutinizing the critical points of proximity and distance between the earlier and later works, the thesis addresses the importance of laughter in Waters' cinema and argues for the film's running representation of queer utopia. This thesis is organised thematically, albeit those themes order the films in almost chronological order. It examines the underground years1 and its grotesque world of cheap thrills; beauty, ugliness and the revolting woman; the strategy of queering suburbia; nostalgia and musical utopias; cult authorship and operations of taste. It concludes pondering Waters' status in today's American popular culture.

Which alternative ways can critics understand the aesthetic and cultural achievements of New Hollywood? This thesis takes the novel approach of interrogating film using close readings that focus on subculture ("milieus") to better understand how aesthetic innovation can be explained through often overlooked "extra-cultural" experiences. It offers the argument that artistic phenomena are not always reactions against contemporary cultural trends and conditions from within, but may be "extra-cultural" events instigated by "Others." It provides specific Jewish explanations for the evolution of New Hollywood. It proposes that the American cinematic revolution of the 1960s and 1970s emerged from the cultural disruption caused by Jewish nightclub comedians and their projection of anti-Semitism and Nazi spectacle onto American culture in order to critique it. This is demonstrated by examining four primary films: Mike Nichols's The Graduate (1967), Elaine May's The Heartbreak Kid (1972), Mel Brooks's The Producers (1968), and Woody Allen's Annie Hall (1977). It was not simply that cultural and aesthetic innovation "articulated a strong opposition to the prevailing rules, morality, and aesthetic standards of the time" (Sobral 3), or that the "culture/counterculture divide was facilitated by the prosperity of post-war America" (Gair 4). The filmmakers here did not share the same counterculture values of their generational peers but instead developed a unique Jewish post-Holocaust sense of guilt by not being a part of an enabled underground resistance, projecting this guilt onto American society, and revamping a cabaret model of cultural and aesthetic resistance, what is here called "New Cabaret." This research originally explores this "New Cabaret" aesthetic: the technical elements of the films as well as the cultural set of principles underlying them and how the two interact. Analyses show that the mixture of small forms intrinsically part of the cabaret stage metamorphosed into important cinematic aesthetic diminutives. These diminutives are examined in numerous readings that support the broader, comprehensive conclusion that these filmmakers rely on the externally produced, Old World representational images of Jews, simultaneously fusing these with their own personal identities, to unravel the power dynamic between American Jewish and Gentile cultures and commercial Hollywood.

Contemporary film and television have been known to use musical tropes associated with the horror genre to construct mentally unwell characters in ways that would be recognisable to a Victorian audience. The stigma attached to mental illness is said to have stemmed from Victorian constructions of madness which defines those depicted as monstrous, animalistic and inhuman, often being linked to ideas of crime, violence and murder.1 This stigma has been reinforced within the media, particularly in film and television in the following character depictions: dual personalities, asylum patients and their mad doctors and sensationalised killers. These character depictions are central themes within literature and case studies. The function of music and sound within the media is to enhance and construct the stigma and stereotype; sound is known for its emotional qualities that the visual alone cannot produce and also its flexibility to construct and mirror a set of ideas. From the use of leitmotifs, vocality, noise as sound, silence, pre-existing music and the mixing and blending of electronic processes, I argue that these musical techniques are used not only to highlight the character's mental state, but to evoke horror, fear and terror in the viewer and enhance the stereotype further. Although sound is used in radically contrasting ways, such soundscapes refer back to the archaic ideas of mental illness dating back to Victorian times. To demonstrate these 'mad' depictions through a variety of films and television programmes, this thesis will analyse the following: A Cure for Wellness (2018); American Horror Story: Asylum (2012); Chicago (2002); Coraline (2009); Dexter (2006); Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil and Vile (2019); Hide & Seek (2004); Shutter Island (2010) and The Girl on the Train (2017). Within these texts and films, the chosen characters are cast as the central protagonist whose mental illness engulfs their identity. I show how the accompanying soundscape influences the viewers and readers to believe that the characters are 'unstable' and 'othered' as determined by the concept of 'Victorian Madness.' 1 Suman Fernando, Social Realities and Mental Health, in Mental Health in a Multi-Ethnic Society: A Multi-Disciplinary Handbook (UK: Routledge, 1995) 13-4.

This study provides a critical transnational examination of films from three culturally and historically interrelated nations in Southeast Asia: Malaysia, Indonesia, and Singapore. Films from these countries are often studied as national cinemas distinct from one another. However, this thesis argues for a theorisation of these cinemas through the concept of Nusantara which speaks to the geographical, social, and cultural patterns of the region before the advent of film and nationalism in Southeast Asia. The overlapping cultural significance of the cinematic representations of these countries is analysed through themes of cultural identity, mobility and belonging. "Nusantara cinema" (or archipelagic cinema) is used as a strategy to evade national political boundaries, thus providing a critical look at transnationalism in film studies (Higbee & Lim, 2010) endeavouring to illustrate such links through motifs that speak to the region's archipelagic culture of mobility, specifically the concept of tanahair (literally, 'land and water' meaning 'homeland') and merantau (to sojourn), as well as the treatment of borderland populations and cultural cosmopolitanism. Nusantara, a portmanteau for 'between islands' is a Malay word referring to island Southeast Asia. Drawing on Homi Bhabha's theories of in-betweenness, hybridity and liminality, I argue that cultural representation in films from the three countries transcends the ethnonationalist frameworks of national culture and national cinema. Firstly, nusantara is a place where cultures meet and regularly compete in asymmetric power relations among groups and individuals who continually seek a feeling of belonging; it is not just their home, but also a 'contact zone' (Pratt, 2002). However, the multifaceted nature of merantau offers a rather complicated sense of place and homeland. Furthermore, the path of sojourners in films reacted to the political and cultural negotiations in the 1960s, 1970s and late 1990s. Currently, films from these countries highlight the borderland communities in liminality, thereby giving credence to transnational cultural identities, as well as promoting cultural and spatial connections across countries and linking Southeast Asia's diversity.

This thesis analyses American cultural motifs in German music films in the years 1929 - 1945 and focuses on generic trends that bridged the political caesura of the year 1933 as the end of Germany's first democracy and the beginning of the dictatorial rule of Adolf Hitler and the Nationalist Socialist party. Early manifestations of a process labelled "Cultural Americanisation" in Germany during the Weimar Republic had a lasting impact on music film production from 1929. One of the strongest factors with great influence on the cultural landscape of the Weimar Republic was jazz, which exceeded its meaning as a musical genre by far and was both heralded and despised as a symbol of modernity. Popular stage genres, such as revue and operetta also absorbed American trends and subsequently influenced generic developments in German music film significantly. When inaugurating the genre of Tonfilmoperette (sound film operetta), German producers, directors and composers looked to Hollywood for inspiration. From its very beginning, German music film was not only perceived in many respects as a reaction to its American counterpart, but continued for several decades to be measured against productions from Hollywood studios. By the time the Nazi regime came into government, musical and visual motifs, as well as themes and dramaturgical concepts associated with American culture and film had been firmly established in German music film. A comparative analysis of German films of both the Weimar Republic and the Nazi era, and American productions of the same periods, explores the multifaceted ways in which the American influence continued to flourish in popular German cinema against the backdrop of heightened political tensions and the conflicted cultural politics of the Nazi regime.

Using Legendary Entertainment as a case study, this thesis examines the relationship between China and Hollywood during the years 2005-2017: the distribution and funding of films, the emergence of co-production partnerships and the geopolitical industrial landscape that has emerged as a result. By tracing the trajectory of Legendary’s Chinese connections, from private investment, to state-financing, to its eventual acquisition by a Chinese company, this thesis explores the company’s vested interests in the development of Chinese partnerships. Therein, this research defines a periodisation and terms to describe the different types of Hollywood-China partnership and interrogates the concept of “Chinawood”. This includes an examination of the growth in the Chinese film market, the business strategies Legendary adopted to aid in developing relations with Chinese film industry institutions and the tactics employed by the studio to enter the Chinese market and cater to Chinese audiences. This thesis examines the promotion of Legendary’s founder - Thomas Tull - as a brand ambassador for the company, offering new and valuable insights into the role of the producer. These findings contribute towards scholarship on industrial organisation; interrogating the distinctions between studio/financier/producer and how these are conflated in the trade discourse. Drawing on primary data from interviews with Hollywood industry personnel, the experience of working with and for Chinese production companies is explored. The successes and failures of The Great Wall (2016), a Legendary Entertainment and China Film Group collaboration, is used as a case study to examine the rise and fall of the Hollywood-China co-production. This data reveals key findings regarding the status of the contemporary Hollywood-China relationship, demonstrating considerable insight and providing a valuable case study which exemplifies the current and recent state of transcultural/transnational relations between Hollywood and China in detail. The Legendary trajectory, as evidenced throughout this thesis, encapsulates the rapidly changing power dynamics of cultural exchange that has existed between the U.S. and China between 2005 and 2017, providing a snapshot of a fascinating and deeply significant period in the tumultuous relationship between the two film industries.

This thesis is an attempt to fill the gap in research present in contemporary South Korean (hereafter Korean) cinema studies in regards to the on-screen representations of modern Korean femininity. In particular, it focuses on the niche character of New Korean Woman, who is depicted as a reflection of the impending cultural and technological transformations of the country in the early 2000s and their influence on women. The figure avoids polarised representations of "good" and "bad" femininity - often present in contemporary Korean cinema partly due to the neo-Confucian legacy of the nation - and instead explores the concept of an individual choice as a decisive factor in a woman's actions and societal role. The analysed case studies have been chosen from the filmography of accomplished and domestically recognised singer and actor Uhm Jung-hwa, who is here considered the pioneer and originator of the imagery associated with this particular type of cinematic heroine. Uhm and her film works have arguably been an important part of the last two decades of Korean film history. They raise issues crucial to modern women, especially those who seemingly reject the primary roles of wives, mothers and care takers imposed on them by society. The thesis additionally argues that the figure of New Korean Woman has been greatly conditioned by Uhm and her professional persona, first established prior to year 2000 on the music scene. Rather than erasing the existence of her celebrity experience, the thesis asserts that the examination of her film career through the context of her public image maintained outside the cinematic industry can significantly influence and enrich the audience's perception of the protagonists represented by Uhm on the screen. On the other hand, Uhm's establishing of such on- and off-screen 'authenticity' ensures the perception of her image as both familiar and extraordinary to the audiences following her career.

This dissertation deconstructs Disney's corporate commodification of multiculturalism and diversity to examine the impacts versus the stated intentions of a US-centric corporation with conservative roots to become more diverse and multicultural in its depiction of race and ethnicity in a more globalized world. I argue that while the Disney Renaissance (1989-1999) period and the decades that followed mark a change from previous constructions of representation in the Disney classic canon, the corporation still falls short of multidimensional, pluralistic representation. Disney engages in cultural imperialism centering a whiteness as normative and subsuming and subordinating any difference under its corporate umbrella, which is then sold globally and supplants other narratives. The dissertation is comprised of three chapters. The first explores the Disney Renaissance and Disney's foray into multicultural representation to identify and locate what I term the Disney fairy-tale mode, as well as Disney's Othering practices, or, how the corporation best handles 'difference' by distinguishing it as different to its established canon. The second problematizes the medievalist constructs at the heart of Disney fairy-tale adaptations while demonstrating how the only two Black princesses depicted by the corporation are given different rules for how they might access the same fairy-tale magic as their white counterparts. The third chapter examines Disney's most recent productions as it continues to remake its 'classics' in CGI and writes sequels to its fairy-tale retellings, and how these productions intersect with the communities they represent. I conclude that Disney fairy-tale and folkloresque narratives are, for better or worse, a global phenomenon; as the world becomes both bigger and smaller in modernity, it remains necessary to keep asking who is granted access to this 'magic kingdom,' and for whom access comes with caveats of being changed or rewritten by the corporation.

This practice-based thesis explores the application of electroacoustic music composition techniques and tools in the context of entertainment science fiction film. After an initial exploration of existing theories in the fields of electroacoustic music and film sound, a practical theory to evaluate and classify suitable sound sources is proposed to enable to composer to derive an amalgamation of the otherwise two distinct components sound and music. An approach from the perspective of sound-based music theories will be the starting point for this type of soundtrack. Based on Simon Emmerson's analytical tool, the language grid a practical application of sounds which are traditionally not considered musical is facilitated. Eventually-and at the minimum-this musical language is meant to supplement if not replace the traditional orchestral sound world. Additional findings of the study include insights in the creation and usability of new instruments, tools to quickly apply and generate textures and gestures. During the research it has furthermore been concluded that while spatial mixing can be of major importance for sound-based music in the context of film, its successful application is stymied by a lack of flexibility (i.e. technological tools) to quickly render up- or downmixes for various settings. Additionally, the limited availability of suitable tools seems to prevent a wider application because of a lack of consistency in the implementation and use of audio standards in cinemas. Currently, a consistent audio experience regardless of the viewer's positioning in the cinema space can unfortunately not be guaranteed. The accompanying demonstration portfolio pieces are segments of scores for the science fiction films Star Trek First Contact, Dawn of the Planet of the Apes and Gravity. Each segment provides a practical exploration of the proposed theory to demonstrate the practicality of electro-acoustic music concepts and composition tools.

Independent French and North American cinema over the last decade have been offering increasingly explicit but also exploratory representations of gay male and lesbian sex and sexual practices, in films ranging from I Want Your Love(USA, 2012) to Blue Is the Warmest Colour(France, 2013) to Paris 05:59 Theo and Hugo(France, 2016). This is as well as some contemporary mainstream films, especially those produced in America, stirring controversy for the avoidance of gay male sex acts, as evidenced in Call Me by Your Name(2017). This thesis, then, responds to this increase in representations of mainly gay male and lesbian sex by critically interrogating and examining: how the acts are stylistically and narratively represented; to what extent the representations either sustain or challenge normative notions of what typically constitutes sex (or that sex directly connects with intimacy, romance and love); and finally to what extent the representations connect with the normalising impulses evident within movements such as 'homonormativity' (Duggan 2002).Using textual analysis, para-textual analysis and theories centred on sex and sexuality (mainly Queer Theories), this extensive research has identified that most representations are in dialogue with, or relate to themes and arguments, revolving around: the politics of representation, explicitness, narrative purposes of sex, and notions of realism and idealism. However, the main theme that cuts across the entire research is the broader issue of 'normativity', and the central research finding of this thesis is that although representations of gay male and lesbian sex acts in French and North American cinema are now, arguably, more varied, explicit and nuanced, these films' messages in regards to sex are more limiting than they seem at face-value. This is because, as I identify in the thesis, the normalising impulses of homonormativity are pervading not only general representations of gay male and lesbian identities in contemporary, popular film cultures, but also their sexual activities and desires.

The thesis examines representations of women and martyrdom in Soviet war cinema of the Stalin era through an analysis of eight fictional films made between 1941-1953, that is from the German invasion of Soviet territory to the end of the Stalinist regime. This research draws a comprehensive picture of the evolution of the cinematic imagery of women and martyrdom in Stalinist war cinema through the examination of the primary sources which provide a spectrum of cinematic heroines from different generations with different social, cultural, economic and educational backgrounds and different functions in war. Drawing on the Althusserian theory of Ideological State Apparatuses (ISAs) as well as post-1970s psychoanalytic film theory, this thesis examines the female and martyrdom theme as mediator between, on the one hand, ideal female heroism and patriotic duties, and on the other hand, everyday citizen and family responsibilities. The clash between Soviet planning and social reality resulted in a gap between the intentions of the Soviet leadership and their consequences. Accordingly, the interrelationship between Soviet planning and reality merits consideration within Soviet scholarship. This thesis, hence, studies the impact of Russian cultural heritage on the Stalinist ISAs, which reveals strong connections between Russian particularism and Soviet universalism. This thesis provides the first book-length study of representations of the female in Soviet war cinema. It sheds new light on the employment of pre-revolutionary Russian cultural heritage in the creation of representations of the female in Stalinist war cinema. This study identifies the cinematic images of women and martyrdom as representing suffering mothers, sisters and wives of the male warriors, as well as symbolic suffering mothers and sisters of the Great Soviet Family. It demonstrates that Soviet women in Stalinist war cinema were deprived of the privilege of becoming martyrs for the Motherland while fulfilling functions of an ideal female Orthodox believer. This thesis challenges the widespread belief in the compatibility of femininity and combat under Stalinism, which claims that within Stalinist political culture traditional gender differences were radically undone, and new forms devised and run for different generations and social groups of Soviet women. Having identified the main features of cinematic representations of women and martyrdom in Stalinist war cinema, and shown them as derived from the expectations of an ideal female Orthodox believer, the thesis at once examines the two-way nexus of (a) Stalinist Socialist Realist war cinema and the submission of the Soviet people to national Bolshevik ideology; (b) national Bolshevism and Russian religious-traditional heritage. In other words, the thesis studies how Russian religious-cultural heritage was adopted to secure the imagination of the Soviet people in relation to their real conditions of existence and their submission to the dominant/national Bolshevik ideology. Examining this imaginary transposition of reality by Soviet Socialist Realist art, whose aim was to ensure the submission of the people to national Bolshevism and the long-term stability of the Stalinist state, this thesis reveals the adoption of Russian religious-cultural heritage on a broader scale, in the service of Stalinist collective identity-building policies and state-citizen relations. As a result, the theoretical approach of this thesis and its findings innovatively contribute to a range of fields within Russian Studies, including gender studies, Soviet cinema studies and the study of Russian/Soviet identity-building and state-citizen relations.

Analysing films about dementia in the new millennium, the thesis argues that people living with dementia, and people not living with dementia, experience time differently. The thesis works through this proposal by putting forward the concept of temporal identification, suggesting that a subject, always in a state of change and becoming, is performing time and performed by time. Then, expanding on this notion, the thesis asserts that a subject's temporal identification is situated in a wider entangled web of temporal identifications on and off screen, and that the lifestories of people living with dementia can be understood as that of continual creation rather than of foreclosure. In arguing that everyone and everything is experiencing time differently, the thesis puts forward a methodological approach that hesitantly explores, surfacing the temporalities indexed by the person living with dementia, and the person not living with dementia and other (non-)living phenomena, on a wider rhizomatic map. Finally, the thesis puts forward a case study of the treatment of dementia in Singapore and Singapore cinema so as to demonstrate the methodological potential of thinking about time through a philosophy of difference and the prism of performance. Ultimately, in exploring the temporal experiences of people living with dementia, the thesis paves the way for future research into the affective politics of ageing and biomedicine.

This practice-led research looks at creative strategies to address the under-represented and marginalised history of Roma persecution in WWII The research has resulted in a film, The Deathless Woman (89' 2019), a hybrid documentary film that has been created in response to European sites of atrocity against the Roma. This practice employs a number of experimental strategies that seek to supplement the limited historiography of the genocide of the Roma during WWII and formulate an innovative approach to documentary production that questions notions of authenticity and indexicality in Western knowledge formation. Starting in 1942 with the murder of a Roma family in a small village in Poland, the film aims to bring these events into the present by employing strategies such as the use of ghosts, fantasy and theatre within a documentary framework. Through this, the film aims to visualise and connect the traumatic past of the Roma to other traumatic pasts and to the traumatic present. This research project interrogates two central research questions. Firstly, how might a phenomenological approach to the invisible be employed in knowledge production to reframe our relationship to traumatic or marginalised histories and make their legacy relevant? Within this, I employ an experimental approach to empiricism that foregrounds the sensory as a device to investigate sites of atrocity. That these events were traumatic and centred on specific geographic sites is critical in my choice of sensory methods. I have paid particular attention to atmospheres, ghosts and affects in constructing both a film and an academic argument that foregrounds sensory experience as a method for knowledge production. Critical to my methodology is my decision not to make binary distinctions between imagination and reality (or truth and fiction), but rather to see the two as interrelated and intertwined. More specifically, this extends to declining to rationalise such things as ghosts, but rather to treat the ghost as an object of experience and this has led to the employment of a ghost as a legitimatised narrator within a documentary film. This fantastic notion has been extended into the film's production through the application of theatrical methods as strategies to further critically challenge and redress the failures of both the archive and of history and has led to my second research question - how might creative strategies in hybrid documentary film practice be effective in reframing marginalised histories in an affectively-impactful way? I demonstrate the potential for non-realist modes such as the literary fantastic, the methods of documentary theatre and the tableau vivant to offer audiences a route to thinking about complicated and traumatic subject matter while simultaneously revealing the virtues and flaws of its sources. The seemingly paradoxical nature of combining documentary and the fantastic comes out of a consideration of what role ghosts might have in the way traumatic histories are communicated and represented, and most importantly, how the ghost has the capacity to bring the past forwards to us in the present. This inter-relationship between imagination or artifice and moral or political thought is at the heart of my work.

Perhaps no other art form relies upon the expressive and communicative potential of the human face quite as much as narrative cinema. It comes as no surprise then that the face - especially as it appears in the close-up - has been a subject of fascination for film theory for over a century now. The past thirty years have seen the face once again return to the fore in theorising about film. In particular, the human face has occupied a special place of interest for the field of cognitive film theory. Cognitive film theory has examined various aspects of the face in recent years: how viewers come to recognise emotions from facial expressions, how cinema can aesthetically 'sculpt' ordinary forms of human expression, and how cinema may elicit empathetic responses through representations of the face are but a few of the topics that have been addressed. Despite the long history of scholarship on the face in film and the recent work within cognitive film theory, there remain numerous unexplored avenues of research. For example, one of the biggest controversies in the scientific study of facial expression is the matter of universality and cultural difference. Are the faces people make the same the world over? Are people equally adept at recognising facial expressions of individuals from cultures beyond their own? And from where do cultural differences in facial expression arise? Although these questions pertain to scientific research on facial expression in everyday life, I argue that the answers to these problems are nonetheless highly significant for our understanding of cinema. This thesis thus responds to two central questions that have hitherto not been addressed in detail in film theory: how do cultural differences shape the representation of faces in narrative cinema? And do film viewers across different cultures recognise and understand faces and facial expressions in substantially different ways? To respond to these questions, this thesis makes the case that we should adopt a 'cognitive cultural' approach. Carl Plantinga has recently proposed that such an approach can account for the mixture of dispositions at work in the viewer's experience of faces in film, since the cognitive cultural approach is explicitly interested in both the universal and the culturally specific. As Lisa Zunshine puts it, the goal of the cognitive cultural project is to make sense of the ever-changing relationship between two highly complex and historically situated systems: cultural artefacts and the human mind. This thesis takes Plantinga's proposal further and aims to show the benefits of adopting a cognitive cultural approach to faces in film. To this end, the first half of the thesis examines the dominant views of facial expression within psychology, explores the implications of cultural differences for understanding film viewership, and presents a general account of how faces and facial expression are represented in film. The second half builds upon this theoretical groundwork and works through three different case studies that demonstrate what is gained from a cognitive cultural approach to faces in film. Ultimately, this thesis advocates for a middle way through the unproductive dichotomies between nature and nurture, universality and cultural difference, and (perhaps above all) cognitivist studies and cultural studies.

Disney princess films and marketing have captured the hearts of children and adults all over the world. However, they may also contain gendered messages that reinforce traditional societal expectations of men and women. This thesis examines the Disney princesses, a worldwide commercial and cultural phenomenon that made $1.686bn just in 2018 (The Licensing Letter 2019). The Disney princesses are 16 royal women featured within animated Disney and Pixar films that are loved by young girls across the globe. This research will explore the Disney princess phenomenon, aiming to answer the following research question: 'How is femininity depicted within the Disney princess phenomenon?' through facet methodology. I examine the role of femininity through three facets. Firstly, by examining the models of femininity depicted in Disney princess films using textual analysis. Secondly, the identified models are used as a framework to examine which models of femininity are dominant in Disney princess merchandising and marketing experiences. Content analysis and interviews supplement this research. Thirdly, I build on this framework once more by examining which models of femininity are dominant within princess park experiences through autoethnography. I identified five 'waves' of femininity within the princess films: passive dreamers, lost dreamers, active leaders, sacrificing dreamers and innovative leaders. Each wave demonstrated characteristics that adhered to psychological understandings of femininity and masculinity. It was found that as more masculine attributes were introduced, the princess' behaviour would be policed by the introduction of a romantic relationship. The most dominant model of femininity within princess merchandising was the innovative leaders due to the heavy marketing of Anna and Elsa (Frozen 2013). Without the sisters, it was the passive and lost dreamers who dominated. Within princess park experiences, the singular character trait of female support was most central, being depicted by active and innovative leaders. Overall, the most dominant model of femininity within the princess consumer experiences was the innovative leaders due to the heavy marketing of the Frozen sisters. Without them, it was the passive dreamers who were most dominant. This thesis has provided an exploratory and holistic examination of the Disney princess phenomenon in its key representations: films, merchandising and marketing, and princess park experiences. It also has provided an up to date analysis of non-franchised and franchised princesses, including the recently released Frozen II (2019), adding further depth to the phenomenon. The film analysis framework created for this research is a transferable and adaptable structure that can be used by future researchers to analyse a phenomenon of their choice. This research is a lens in which to view and understand how a global phenomenon such as the Disney princesses can contribute to the depiction of femininity within popular culture. I have identified micro changes within the phenomenon due to the in-depth nature of my analysis. It has provided a deeper insight to the 16 heroines in order to highlight how the phenomenon has changed and developed over time.

The Coen brothers are sometimes dismissed as mere parodists or imitators, simply copying images, themes and motifs from a variety of sources. In a postmodern world, however, strict definitions are more complicated. Whilst we may think of this practice as a mode of intertextual practice, what was once considered intertextuality is now out-dated, as it refers only to works of literature. Instead, when inspirations can cross media from other forms, it is most appropriate to consider this as intermediality. Yet, whilst the Coen brothers’ films are certainly in keeping with intermedial theory, this alone does not define them. They are best understood through the underlying process of remediation, as advocated by Bolter and Grusin. This posits that all works, no matter which medium they belong to, can only be interpreted through their relationships with other works which they recall, be it knowingly or not. In all of their eighteen films so far, the Coen brothers have revealed themselves to be consciously remediative filmmakers, using other sources (including literary fiction, other films and music) to inform their work. This process, by which their films become new amalgamative wholes, marks them out. It is defined by the ways in which they use remediations of other sources to both revive period styles and genres, further informing their own stories, creating connections and through-lines to cinematic history and allowing them to revisit the past in a postmodern way. This thesis will primarily demonstrate this process by outlining the theoretical basis of this process and by creating a catalogue of many (although not all) of these remediations, ultimately showing why they should be viewed as remediative filmmakers, by analysing nine of their films in detail, alongside their most high-profile unfilmed screenplay, to show how creative and significant the practice of remediation is when used as a theory of filmmaking.

Since the 1993 market-oriented reform, the Chinese government has strengthened its role in the domestic film industry’s commercialisation. Feng Xiaogang’s New Year Celebration Films (hesui pian, NYCFs), by virtue of their impressive box-office performance, are a valuable indicator of how commercial imperatives work in tandem with ideological prescriptions and state censorship to shape contemporary Chinese commercial filmmaking. This thesis selects, as case studies, Feng’s eight NYCFs of modern urban life across the period from the late 1990s, when he began making films in this mode with governmental support, to the 2000s, when his NYCFs address genre shift in the context of China’s entry to the WTO: Party A, Party B (Jiafang yifang, 1997), Be There or Be Square (Bujian busan, 1998), Sorry Baby (Meiwan meiliao, 1999), Sigh (Yisheng tanxi, 2000), Big Shot’s Funeral (Dawan, 2001), Cell Phone (Shouji, 2003), A World Without Thieves (Tianxia wuzei, 2004) and If You Are The One (Feicheng wurao, 2008). It investigates how the political economy of the Chinese film industry — comprising three interactive aspects in this context, industry commercialisation, government regulation and popular culture — produced Feng’s NYCFs as a popular commercial genre. To facilitate this investigation, this thesis merges textual, industrial and cultural-policy analysis, combining film texts with attention to the government’s cultural and industrial policies, film regulations and censoring rules, the Party’s political philosophies and relevant campaigns in the film sphere, the trend in popular culture of humour from the late 1980s to the 2000s, and interview materials involving Feng and his close collaborators. It argues that Feng’s filmmaking, along with the three categories’ mutual construction, appropriates popular humorous expression to integrate political promotion and commercial return. This market-approved integration, in turn, promotes the film industry’s state-led commercialisation, with regulatory authorities using economic and administrative means to infuse state propaganda into domestic filmmaking and thus, consolidate the Party’s cultural hegemony. This thesis contributes to a nuanced understanding of the relationship between state, film industry, and filmmakers. Taking a political economy perspective, it uses Feng’s NYCF production as a lens through which to illuminate Chinese cinema’s production culture, in the context of state-led commercialisation. In addition, the thesis offers a new model that acknowledges the intersection of popular culture and ideology in constructing cultural hegemony, and further, highlights the role of the popular culture of humour in coordinating state propaganda and social critique in contemporary Chinese commercial cinema.

This research is concerned with translating the experience of drowning to film form. A hybrid of Practice as Research (PaR) and narrative methodologies under a constructionist conceptual framework was used to examine small stories from thirteen survivors and visualise their experiences of drowning. This was a journey of praxis, creative work and research taking place simultaneously, so each influenced the other and concluded in the creation of four pieces of work: two documentary films, Far Away Land and Immersion; a documentary installation, Drowning Is Easy; and this thesis. The films push the boundaries of conventional nonfiction narratives and reflect three distinct styles and approaches to documentary making (expository; poetic and reflexive; and interactive). Perceptions of drowning are diverse. In film and mass media, it is often portrayed as a noisy and spectacular event, characterised by shouting and waving, but the participants of this study narrated stories of quiet, unspectacular events, concurrent with current bioscientific explanations of the physiological process of drowning. Therefore, the documentaries produced contest the typical representation of drowning. The research is placed within the lineage of the constructionist and constructivist filmmaking traditions and can be considered as an expansion of the theories and practices of documentary practitioners such as Vertov, Eisenstein, Morris and Green. This thesis problematised the dichotomised conception of authenticity and aesthetics as opposing forces. Rather than focusing on the tensions between them, their symbiotic relationship is explored through the prism of plot and emplotment. Authenticity is reflected in the plot (which is conceptualised as the story of the experience of drowning), the original interview and the edited audio track, which is used as the documentary narrative. Aesthetics is captured as emplotment, considered to reflect the choices made in visualising these stories and translating them to film form. Emplotment reflects the style, aesthetics and directorial choices made during the production of each documentary. The theory that supported this research was derived from several sources and this study offers original contributions to knowledge by drawing from a variety of disciplines and applying theoretical constructs to the documentaries and this thesis in an original manner. As a worked-through and developed example of employing Nelson’s (2013) Page 2 model of PaR, this critical reflection on the process, when added to the creative output, is knowledge generating. The translation of the experience of drowning to film form has contributed to knowledge by bringing to the public (through audiences in film festivals, galleries and conferences) a more accessible, multi-faceted and rich account of the experience of drowning than had previously existed. This research is an informed act of creativity that interprets and promotes the narratives of survivors whose trauma would otherwise have been rendered invisible.

This thesis is the first exploration of Woody Allen’s influence on contemporary American cinema. It focuses specifically on the impact of Annie Hall (dir. Woody Allen, 1977), Allen’s most iconic film, on American film and television of the last ten years, specifically those that, like Annie Hall, take place in New York and are centred on a breakup that is expressed through memory. They all have central female protagonists who, like Annie, finally find artistic and personal fulfilment on their own. I examine Allen’s own oeuvre post-Annie Hall, as well as Tiny Furniture (dir. Lena Dunham, 2010), Girls (HBO: 2012-2017), Frances Ha (dir. Noah Baumbach, 2012) and Appropriate Behavior (dir. Desiree Akhavan, 2014). Allen’s films have mostly focused on the breakups of heterosexual white middle-class people, often to the detriment of the depiction of other races, social classes, and sexualities. My analysis uses intersecting methodologies, including feminist film theory, Black feminist theory, queer theory and disability theory to unpack the way these post-Annie Hall films repeat reductive and harmful stereotypes of different social groups, or mark their deviation from his work by focusing on a nuanced expression of these marginalised idenitites. This thesis makes an important contribution to the field by highlighting the complicated nature of Allen’s influence on contemporary American cinema. I demonstrate how this influence is characterised by a compulsion to repeat and a desire to separate, underpinned, no doubt, by Allen’s biographical scandals and a changing landscape that makes the filmmaker’s legacy all the more uncertain.

This thesis explores the relation between film noir and home in the 1940s. I view film noir as a traumatic category of films. Within film noir, home is a traumatic and often displaced object. Through home, this thesis analyses how history is lost in noir, and engages with noir's conceptual impossibility and retroactivity. My approach is focused around a series of close readings of a selection of film noirs, including Stranger on the Third Floor, Double Indemnity, The Killers, Mildred Pierce, The Woman in the Window, Gilda, and others. These well-known films were selected due to the way in which the centrality of home is overlooked in noir criticism. Home is both completely central to understanding the ambiguity of noir, and largely absent. Complementing these readings, I explore the psychoanalytic logic of film noir — drawing on the work of Jacques Lacan, Sigmund Freud, as well as Mark Fisher and Slavoj Žižek — in order to articulate the function of 'home' in film noir. The primary goal of this thesis is to centre the films themselves and highlight their conceptual complexity in relation to broader historical and theoretical frameworks, such as the Second World War and its aftermath, as well as noir's own retroactive conception and theoretical formalisation in the 1970s.

The characterisation of the contemporary creative and cultural industries (CCIs) as ‘cool, creative and egalitarian’ (Gill, 2002) has been unpicked in recent literature (Grugulis and Stoyanova, 2012; Eikhof and Warhurst, 2013, Randle et al, 2015). A growing consensus suggests this is a meritocratic ideal rather than a reality, indicating CCIs are the domain of the white, male and middle-class (Randle, et al, 2015; O’Brien et al, 2016). The thesis is intended to inform a deeper historical understanding of some of the inequalities that persist in the contemporary CCIs. While some CCIs (radio, film and television) originated at the end of the 19th or the beginning of the 20th century, there is very little academic work which investigates the extent of egalitarianism or meritocracy in the film industry during much of the 20th century. The most robust historical study of class and employment in CCIs suggests that is likely that they have always been unequal, but points to a lack of historical data from which to evaluate the past (Banks, 2017). In order to contribute greater historical background to the sociological issue, this thesis therefore draws on an historical qualitative analysis of the film production careers of 37 men, from a mixture of working class origins (WCOs) and middle-class origins (MCOs) most of whose work began in the 1930s and ended in the 1970s. The primary source of data comprises oral history interviews from the British Entertainment History Project (BEHP) archive housed at the BFI Library. The research explores, specifically, work between 1927 and 1947 as the British Studio System emerged and many film occupations developed around the introduction of sound technology. The evidence suggests that certain structural arrangements, unique to the vertically integrated studios, provided some opportunities for working-class men in the past. However, these are shown to be exceptions that need to be qualified by a deeper understanding of the ‘fields’ (Bourdieu, 1984) that emerged around different film occupations within the studio system. To provide a deeper understanding of the ways in which career trajectories were mediated in different occupational settings, a Bourdieusian inspired, historical model of the association between class origins and male career destinations has been designed. Analysis of these careers highlights a long history of class-based inequalities that subsequently became embedded in employment practices and within many film production occupations and departments. Although careers during this period were enacted around different structural arrangements to those today, certain trends and associations between class background and opportunities were being shaped during the 1930s.

This thesis examines a number of mainstream fiction feature films which incorporate imagery from non-cinematic moving image technologies. The period examined ranges from the era of the widespread success of television (i.e. the late 1950s) to the present day. The films featured in the study emerge from a variety of genres, countries and budget, while remaining within a “mainstream” classification, by which I mean films which generally secured a significant theatrical release. Across four chapters I examine films which feature the following non-cinematic moving image technologies: “sub-gauge” film; “live” video, including CCTV and television; “home” or analogue video; digital video. Each chapter briefly outlines the origins, standard usages and aesthetic characteristics of the technology, before progressing to case studies of individual films which utilise or reference these technologies to a significant effect. Each considers the ways in which films and filmmakers utilise characteristics of “alternate” media to transform narrative delivery and development, or to comment on some of the aesthetic aspects of either the incorporated medium, or film itself. The thesis argues that such films incorporate media in ways which either remediates or transforms their products, through film, or in doing so, comments on cinema. The technologies featured have been chosen as significant contributors to the emerging total image economy of developed societies throughout the latter half of the twentieth century. The study examines the ways in which their impact on society, culture and media industries is framed within films which feature their products and/or practices. In the final chapter this analysis is applied to the contemporary debate regarding the destabilising effect of digital image technologies on the ontology and long-term viability of cinema, by placing such debates with a longer-term context of a debate within film regarding the impact a variety of alternate image technologies.

The home movie has always been a borderline film category that breaks with cinematic standards and occupies a liminal position between the artistic and non-artistic domain. The very nature of these films has rendered traditional analytical frames such as film analysis, ethnographic investigation and participatory practices not only hard to apply, but also ineffectual for opening their meaning to a public made of specialist and non-specialist audiences. Sicilian home movies in particular constitute an underexplored yet rich field of enquiry. In my project, I deal with Sicilian home movies and the way we can reimagine their role as social objects in an increasingly digital context. The aim of the project is to find new methods and forms of expression that make these films more relatable. Bergson’s concept of actualization provides a suitable theoretical frame for conceptualizing new ways of looking at and engaging with these archives. Using this frame, I develop a practice-led approach that deploys creative interventions such as drawing, ethnographic interventions and participatory exercises, as tools materialising this broader vision. This gives rise to an iterative process that explores practice against theory and theory against practice and creates new constructs dealing with the tacit, sensuous and affective in these archives. These modalities challenge traditional methods by asking if and how we can produce a different and disembodied way of knowing the archive that is deeply rooted in lived experience. They also give rise to looser ways of investigation that render aesthetic experience more inclusive and participative. The novel methodology with its associated reading modalities and the interactive documentary offering a different way of engaging with Sicilian archives, have been collated into the project website www.homemoviesicily.com. They can benefit both researchers, artists and communities of non-specialist audiences. Furthermore, the project opens up two future research directions. The first looks at how we could take tools like the interactive documentary into the mainstream. The second envisages how creative exercises can give rise to further interaction modalities. Both directions represent a modest but important step for the future of these archives.

India’s cultural heritage is rich in Transcendental philosophies, yet unlike many other Indian cultural forms, such as theatre and music, very few Indian filmmakers consciously explore the Transcendent in their films. The aim of this research project is to discover in what ways cinematic forms can be developed and embedded in narrative film to engage more consciously with Indian Transcendental concepts. Most Indian mainstream cinema still practises Aristotle’s five-act dramatic structure. The research investigates the conscious efforts of some filmmakers who have attempted experimental narrative structures. My PhD is a practice led research embedding Indian transcendental philosophy to film making practices.

This project offers a creative investigation into the medium of Cinematic Virtual Reality, identifying the distinguishing characteristics of the medium as they relate to the technical, thematic and aesthetic language the creative has access to. Drawing primarily on CVR as a cinematic construct, this investigation focuses on two key concepts that differentiate CVR from fixed frame media: frames (the window in which the virtual world is composed and navigated by the viewer) and spaces (the relationship between the viewer and the surrounding virtual environment). The creative portfolio explores many different possible implementations of creative thought in CVR, bringing the world of contemporary electronic and electroacoustic music into the audiovisual medium of CVR. The ideas of frames and spaces are used to structure a discussion of the creative portfolio, allowing this PhD to document the act of composing audiovisual works in CVR that are conceived from the unique communicative properties of the media.

In close dialogue with Martin Heidegger’s early ontology (Being and Time, 1927) and his metaphysics (“What is Metaphysics?”, 1929; Introduction to Metaphysics, 1935), this thesis argues that cinema offers a privileged site for the showing and preservation of human being. I open with a historical survey of theories of filmic presence spanning psychological, animist, spiritual, realist and sensual dimensions. Distinguishing the existential priority of my project from film-phenomenological theories of realism and the senses and the recent category of “Slow Cinema”, I propose the term “cinema of Being” to describe films where the subject’s relation to itself and the world is understood, phenomenally, outside notions of embodiment, subjective/ objective perception or socio-cultural interpretation. I conceive a Heideggerian moving image in two stages: first, by reading Heidegger’s philosophy of art and technology – including his rare comments on film – in light of his description of human autonomy, second, through an examination of his ontologies of the image, focused on the debate between the closure of representation and the opening offered in self-presentation. A discussion of the authorial createdness of an artwork serves to ground my proposition of a cinema of ontological attunement versus ontic distraction. Through close film analysis, I proceed to show how films by Yasujirô Ozu, Michelangelo Antonioni and Béla Tarr distinctly solicit the self-experience and safeguarding of the modern human subject. My claim is that in these works thematic concerns are embedded, exceeding their narrative dimension, in the directors’ experimental (modernist and contemporary) aesthetic strategies. Understanding aesthetics as the authentic means by which intention is transposed to the work of art, I argue that Heidegger’s existential concepts – such as thrownness, mood, horizonal transcendence, presencing in unconcealment, and the nothing – become crucial in identifying philosophical implications of performance, cinematography, assemblage and sound design. Central to my enquiry is the figuring and un-figuring radically employed by the filmmakers to draw out the onscreen presence of their human subjects in visualities that, beyond realism and abstraction, expose the interdependence between the ontological priority (being) and its metaphysical root (nothingness). Drawing a parallel between the “moment of vision”, described by Heidegger as the epiphanic confrontation of the subject with its contingent humanity, and the encounter between disclosive image and attentive beholder, I propose, in lieu of the established notion of psychoanalytic identification, the filmic event of ontological recognition. The study concludes by acknowledging, in the cinematic call to individual dignity, the ethical import of the human relation.

This thesis is an investigation into the practices, values, and roles of cinemagoing and film-watching for contemporary British teenagers using qualitative research methods. My key concern is with how 13-18 year olds from different backgrounds define and discuss their film consumption, and visits to different cinemas, in the wider contexts of their leisure, cultural, and media practices. This focus stems from the scholarly appeal for a social contextualization of audiences and the structures that inform peoples’ consumption practice. Many groups experience barriers to participation with particular cinemas that are not simply a consequence of economic deprivation or a lack of media literacy. These are barriers that are felt at the level of what Bourdieu calls the habitus, the system of cultural tastes and dispositions that are lived at the physical or bodily level. To this end, I conducted focus groups, interviews, and participant observation encounters with 42 teenagers in different settings within Norwich and Norfolk. Data analysis is undertaken via the application of a coding system, formulated through a Bourdieusian conceptual lens. I consider participants’ film and media consumption practices in relation to area of residence, sociocultural preferences and friendship formations, whilst also considering issues of identity, education, and parental practices. As part of the process I present the case of specialised film and cinema-going as a case-study in order to address a concern about the dearth of young audiences engaging with specialised cinema. The rich, deep qualitative data collected has enabled me to argue that generally young people’s socio-economic, geographic, familial, peer-grouping, and educational contexts remained a significant influence on film viewing practices, tastes, and gratifications, although some anomalies were present. My research therefore presents new findings on how different groups of young people attach diverse meanings and roles to film viewing practices, texts and locations in cinemas and beyond.

This study critically contributes to the understanding of decolonisation in postcolonial Africa through documentary films by investigating a decolonial moment, a bold attempt to disentangle an ex‐colonised part of the world from coloniality by infusing the indigenous Zairian spirit into national film. This is a study of the cultural politics, on film, of the Second Republic of Zaire (1965-1997), now the Democratic Republic of Congo, the research explores the portrayal of the national image on film. This study identifies a particular mode of filmmaking that contributes to nation-building through the concept of ‘development films’. The term proposed for Zairian films is drawn from Domatob and Hall’s (1983) analysis of the rise and limitations of development journalism in Black Africa since independence. Through this study, the author intends to rediscover a collective understanding of the function of film as a tool to promote and educate towards progress in the newly born nation of Zaire by looking at filmmakers’ participation in promoting the government’s ideals through the Pan-African practice of development journalism, and political activism through media. The research project Decolonisation Through ‘Development Films’: Constructing and Re-Constructing the Zairian Spirit on Film is based on interviews with Congolese filmmakers who were active during the Zairian period, together with the author’s research and digital restoration of films, including Salongo (1975) and Election 1970 (1970), which had been written off as being lost or unusable. These were found through fieldwork in the Democratic Republic of Congo and Belgium. Through textual analysis and extra filmic information, this research explores these films as reflecting and sustaining the ideological changes brought about by Mobutu’s cultural revolution and the expressions of Zairian culture that are imagined for the population. The research’s aim to reconstruct the Zairian spirit is not to revive a political momentum that is associated with a political flag, rather, it is to acknowledge a lost national filmography as part of the history of the country which has been erased by the political elite that followed, as well as being erased by natural agents in the archives, which therefore deprived the country of the possibility to reflect critically on its own history through part of its national iconography.

“I feel I am a pure metaphysician,” declared Gilles Deleuze in a 1981 interview, and although perhaps his statement is more provocation than proof, this thesis takes Deleuze’s admission seriously in a reading of his 'Cinema' books. It is the proposal of this thesis that many accounts of Deleuze’s cinematic philosophy and its ethical implications do not sufficiently interrogate Deleuze’s underlying metaphysical commitments. By first placing Deleuze’s philosophy in a tradition of metaphysical inquiry, I understand his work on cinema as part of a post-Kantian metaphysics underwritten by a vitalist reorientation of transcendental philosophy. From this standpoint, cinema acts as a model for thinking about the metaphysical production of reality, providing an inhuman transcendental perspective that reveals the contingency of habitual modes of perception. The first chapter analyzes the transition from movement- to time-images as cinema’s Copernican Revolution. The concept of 'antiproduction' – as that which allows sense to be made in the relentless becoming of production – proves instrumental in positioning aesthetic shifts in cinema as grounded in Deleuze’s metaphysics. The second chapter excavates cinema from the perspective of its birth as a scientific instrument to explore the ability of film to experiment with the possibilities of thought, reading Deleuze’s work through Jean Epstein’s practice of cinema as a 'lyrical science'. The third chapter interrogates the historical status of Deleuze’s narrative of film alongside a concept of technicity garnered through the work of Gilbert Simondon, figuring progressions of cinematic logic as 'transcendental events': ruptures that do not merely happen 'in' time but constitute things that happen 'to' time, producing shifts in the conditions of experience. Taking Deleuze’s metaphysics seriously requires facing up to the unsavoury aspects of its corresponding ethical position and demands a critical perspective to reveal its fatalistic implications when put to work in the contemporary context. Deleuze decries a rendering of the image as information, but in the fourth chapter I take the digitality of the current media landscape to be the conditions under which a post-cinematic pedagogy can escape an ethical and political fatalism. Cinema, through its modelling of thought as metaphysically contingent in the onslaught of becoming, can thus also act as a site on which to ground thinking. Much existing scholarship on Deleuze’s cinematic philosophy either accepts thought’s powerlessness as its ethical epicentre or ignores Deleuze’s metaphysics in order to smuggle humanist sentiment through the backdoor of politics. Against this, I will reintroduce the importance of a metaphysical principle of contingent reason with the intention of valorizing the self-grounding of reason as ethically primary for an engagement with cinema.

My research explores the crucial role of screen media in representing the politics of gentrification in East London. Although the accelerated pace of regeneration and its divisiveness affect the whole city and gentrification is now being studied at a planetary scale, East London has emerged as a laboratory for global trends in urban renewal since the 1980s, with the redevelopment of the Docklands, and it has continued as such with the regeneration of the area for the 2012 Olympic Games. The film and media I explore produce an archive of East London as a radically contested urban terrain where different communities and social actors negotiate access to public space and housing. I argue that the Eastern part of the city is today characterized as a transitional space and as a site of convergence and global connectivity, in contrast to its earlier depiction as the poverty struck and crime-ridden, but more authentically working-class “other” to the West End. In order to render the complexities and nuances of this mediascape and the different political stances towards gentrification it represents, I explore a wide range of formats, including feature films, television documentaries, television series and essay films. I contextualise these screen productions within the wider mediated constructions of urban space which contribute to the place-making of the area, from music videos to real estate promotions. I explore how the ongoing socio-economic transformation of East London taking place off screen is mapped on screen through three distinct modes of media activity: production, representation, and resistance. I situate my research at the intersection of film and urbanism, therefore drawing on studies of London on screen and spatial analyses of film and media and setting them in conversation with housing studies, sociology and geography. Although a socio-historical analysis of the media texts is at the core of my research, I also consider aspects of production and circulation that contribute to shaping the media landscape of East London, intervening in an area of film studies that is still not sufficiently studied: the role of film and media in representing gentrification and its counter-narratives.

Inspired by operatic and theatrical traditions such as Peking Opera, cinematic kung fu is considered by David Bordwell to be the condensation and expression of “motion emotion” through rhythmic, exaggerated, and spectacular movements. Leon Hunt takes a different approach and focuses on the authenticity of cinematic kung fu by highlighting the significance of real martial arts styles, unmediated performances, and physical risks. While these two major frameworks offer valuable insights into the action aesthetics of kung fu cinema, their emphasis on the visual and visceral pleasures of kung fu cinema has reinforced and reproduced the stigma of kung fu film as “chop-socky” bodily spectacles. Their frameworks also preclude consideration of the literary dimension, such as what Stephen Teo calls the wuxia (martial chivalry) tradition, and the sociopolitical dimension, which explores issues of local (national) identity, masculinity, and (post)coloniality. In extant scholarship on kung fu cinema, from Bordwell to Hunt and beyond, the major weakness has proven to be the failure of scholars to connect the five major domains of kung fu cinema, namely the cinematic, the martial, the aesthetic, the philosophical, and the sociopolitical. Not only has this failure made the theorization of cinematic kung fu rather uniform and facile, but it has also reinforced the idea that the martial arts tradition is aesthetically and philosophically deficient. Against this backdrop, this dissertation formulates a new conceptual framework anchored by the concept of wuyi (martial ideation) and addresses the current methodological and epistemological shortcomings in kung fu cinema scholarship vis-à-vis the prioritization of authenticity and expressivity above all else. Martial ideation is the synthesis of action and stasis that contains the powerful overflow of emotion in tranquility. With reference to the key role that tranquility plays in kung fu cinema, it is possible to open a constructive dialogue between Euro-American film theories and Chinese aestheticsphilosophy. Specifically, the tranquility of martial ideation has three manifestations: Stability, adaptability, and sensitivity. Philosophically, these three are rooted in Confucianism, Daoism, and Buddhism via the concepts of ren (humaneness), wu (nothingness), and guan (perspicaciousness); martially, they are embodied in the martial arts styles of Hung Gar, Jeet Kune Do, and Wing Chun; and cinematically, they are represented by the early Wong Feihung films in 1949 and 1950, Bruce Lee’s kung fu films in the early 1970s, and the Ip Man biopics from 2008 on. By assessing various different configurations of martial ideation in different periods, one is afforded the opportunity to gain more comprehensive and more profound insights into the ways that kung fu cinema operates in myriad different domains. From this perspective, the new framework developed in this thesis brings together, for the first time, previously separate domains in the study of kung fu cinema and provides a more integrated and holistic account of kung fu cinema and its probative aesthetic and philosophical contributions to the art of cinema.

This thesis combines writing and audio-visual essays to examine, and better understand, Academy-Award-winning supporting female film performances (from 1936-2015). It utilises audio-visual research as methodology, through a series of deformative editorial interventions on the award-winning films, and as outcome (the video essays). This research contributes chiefly to the intellectual field of audio-visual criticism, specifically asking what deformative criticism’s role can be in the study of screen performance. Through a two-fold practice methodology of re-editing the original films to remove everything but the supporting female performance, and the subsequent creation of a series of audio-visual essays that tackle this corpus of screen performances from different perspectives, I gained a better understanding of the kinds of female supporting performances that are valued by the Academy. A shift away from role and towards performance allowed the intellectual inquiry of the thesis to engage specific films and performances, with a view to producing audio-visual essays that explore: how non-performance factors such as screentime mediate performance; ideas of enactment of support and how this relates to small, easily-overlooked performance qualities; and, performance style, and whether it is possible to discern overall styles across this corpus. The practice nature of this thesis, as far as I am aware, makes this one of the first (if not the first) of its kind in film studies. I was researching in ‘uncharted waters’ so to speak. This afforded me freedoms and challenges in equal measure. There was, and remains, no template for how to structure a thesis that uses audio- visual work as both research process and research outcome. However, it is my aim that the work of this thesis may inspire future doctoral researchers to try new things: experiment, play, make, reflect – to do these as part of a different, audio- visual research process.

This practice as research thesis explores the representation of place in the essay film. Place and landscape are frequent subjects of the essay film, films that often form through, and in response to, encounters with the spaces of the world. This thesis seeks to shed light onto the essayistic representation of place through exploring the structures, make-up and experience of places and landscapes and through the application of theory from the field of geography. I establish what I call an essaying of place in order to describe the processes and outcomes of an approach to cities and landscapes through the essay film, one in which the complexities and multiplicities of place come to the fore. Central to the thesis is a focus on temporality in a consideration of place and in developing an understanding of the relationship between place and the essay film. I produced two film works that both take an essayistic form in an approach to representing place and landscape, embodying the theoretical research and expanding this research through creative production. My practice approaches the spaces of England through the essay film, where travelling acts as a film production device, as a research tool and as a method of putting into practice an essaying of place. The process oriented nature of a practice as research project positions filmmaking as a key element in understanding my work as a practitioner alongside the wider research into the essay form.

This thesis traces how and when the lives and stories of Trans people became a topic of interest to exhibition curators in British museums. Between 2015 and 2017, a host of new exhibits around the country began to pay serious attention to the Trans community, often drawing on existing narratives found in medical contexts and popular culture. The addition of Trans material in exhibitions coincided with the national remembrance of the 50th anniversary of the partial decriminalization of homosexuality in England and Wales. Few museum professionals, however, exercised self-reflexivity in creating accounts of Trans people, unaware of the influence of popular culture. To better understand the vital connections between Trans representations in popular culture and museums, I examine six films about Trans people to establish the boundaries of what I term the 'Trans genre'. The representative films are Glen or Glenda (1953), The Christine Jorgensen Story (1970), The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert (1994), Boys Don't Cry (1999), Transamerica (2005), and The Danish Girl (2015). The films cover the period from the first explicit film about a Trans person (Glen or Glenda) until the time of the opening of my case study exhibits. This thesis then turns to several case studies of museum exhibits that included Trans history. I interviewed the project coordinator for each exhibit to learn more about the decision-making processes in creating and developing the exhibits. I further analyse the objects selected for each exhibit to discern patterns in Trans museum representation. This study is the first to scrutinize Trans representation during the LGBTQ exhibit 'boom' of 2017. I read emerging patterns in Trans representation in the context of the popular media, suggesting that the narratives of Trans lives from popular media were replicated in museums. This thesis calls on future curators to think carefully about their investment in a medical model of Trans identity, and consider alternative frameworks to better capture the complexities of the experiences of Trans people.