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Film Studies
National ratings
Kent was ranked 8th in the UK for Drama, Dance and Cinematics in the Times Good University Guide 2009.
Taught programmes
Research programmes
The Film Studies department at the University of Kent is known for its excellence in research and teaching. It was ranked second in the UK for research power in the most recent Research Assessment Exercise (RAE).
One of the largest European centres for the study of film, it has an established reputation going back 35 years. Approaching film as a dynamic part of our cultural experience; we encourage thinking about film as it emerges at the intersections of art, document and entertainment. Through theory and practice, individual research, student-led seminars and visiting speakers, we promote an environment in which postgraduate students are able to engage with the continuing vibrancy of cinema.
Studying film as a postgraduate at the University of Kent will give you the opportunity to experience our rich resources of academic expertise, library facilities and a campus-based film culture. We currently offer expertise in North American, European, and Latin American cinemas. Our research and teaching will engage you in a dialogue with aesthetic, conceptual and historical perspectives, as well as with digital media and practice by research.
Internationally recognised research
Our staff produce internationally recognised research at the intersections of film theory, history, practice, and the conceptual and stylistic analysis of moving image media. Based on this expertise, we are able to support research across a wide range of topics, including: moving image theory, history and criticism; American, European and Latin American cinemas; documentary, digital media and animation. There are also close connections between Film Studies and the Aesthetics Research Group.
The recently established Centre for the Interdisciplinary Study of Film promotes our excellence in research and hosts a range of research events including symposia, visiting speakers, and workshops.
Film-making
The Section has a growing emphasis on film-making.
Key members of staff include Clio Barnard, Virginia Pitts and Sarah Turner. Clio Barnard's recent film The Arbor was nominated for a BAFTA and Clio received the best newcomer and original debut feature at the London Film Festival and best new documentary film-maker at the Tribeca Film Festival. Virginia Pitts' films Trust Me (2001) and Fleeting Beauty (2004) were selected to screen at 25 international film festivals, toured US art galleries and sold widely to television.
Her latest film, Beat (2010), a narrative-dance piece exploring dialogism as an ideal for human interaction, is currently on the international festival circuit where it has been nominated for awards in New Zealand, Canada, the US and Greece.
Sarah Turner's work includes a number of short experimental films and the feature-length Ecologies. In 2008, she orchestrated Overheated, an interactive mobile phone film-making project, created as a symphony of women's voices from around the world. Her latest feature, Perestroika, premièred at the London Film Festival and received a wide range of positive reviews.
Dynamic Publishing Culture
Recent staff publications include: Recording Reality, Desiring the Real (Elizabeth Cowie); Through Amateur Eyes: Film and Photography in Nazi Germany (Frances Guerin); Hollywood Catwalk: Reading Costume and Transformation in American Film (Tamar Jeffers McDonald); Maxium Movies – Pulp Fiction: Film Culture and the Worlds of Mickey Spillane, Samuel Fuller and Jim Thompson (Peter Stanfield); Thinking Through Cinema: Film as Philosophy (Murray Smith); and Digital Encounters (Aylish Wood).
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