Film at the University of Southampton

23/07/2026

🎓✨ Film staff University of Southampton celebrating the incredible Class of 2026 at graduation! A fantastic day recognising the hard work and achievements of our graduates. We’re proud of everything you’ve accomplished and can’t wait to see what comes next. 🎬🌟 🎓🎥✨

23/07/2026

How can video essays transform Film Studies teaching and assessment? A new open-access article co-authored by Dr Dominic Topp explores the opportunities, challenges and future of videographic criticism in higher education.

Click to find out more: https://journals.uclpress.co.uk/fej/article/id/3903/

👏 Congratulations to Dom and his co-authors on this excellent contribution to scholarship on film education and videographic criticism.

18/06/2026

Next Tuesday, 23rd June, the Department of Film at the University of Southampton will be holding a day-long symposium on Interwar Cinema and Q***r History: Researching the LGBTQ+ Past. The event will bring together scholars working on cinema and q***r history in the 1910s-30s.

Please join us to network, explore research interests, and identify key themes and gaps in scholarship, as well as to discuss the archival sources and challenges involved in researching the LGBTQ+ past.

Details here: https://www.southampton.ac.uk/humanities/news/events/2026/05/interwar-cinema-and-q***r-history.page

16/03/2026

🎬 Special Screening + Director Q&A 🎬

We’re delighted to invite you to a one-off special screening of Films to Die For, directed by Prof Lúcia Nagib (University of Reading), followed by an in‑conversation and Q&A with the director.

📅 Thursday 19 March 2026
🕕 6.00pm
📍 Harbour Lights Picturehouse, Southampton

Presented by the Film Studies Department, University of Southampton, this exclusive event will be chaired by Dr Ruby Cheung, who will also lead the post‑screening discussion with the director.

Synopsis:

The essayistic documentary Films to Die For investigates how films are born from other films, and are a matter of life and death for filmmakers. Wim Wenders’s The State of Things (Der Stand der Dinge, 1982), an iconic cinephilic film, serves as the entry point into an international web of interconnected films. Ending with the death of a Hollywood producer and a German independent filmmaker, The State of Things allows for a meditation on the presumed ‘death of cinema’ after the postmodern ‘end of history’. At the same time, it resonates in fascinating ways with the real death of Cinema Novo leader Glauber Rocha after the critical failure of his last film, a tragedy predicted by Rocha himself as he meets Patrick Bauchau, the lead actor in The State of Things, on location in Sintra and declares: ‘Sintra is a beautiful place to die’

Tickets can now be booked here:

https://www.picturehouses.com/movie-details/017/HO00017752/films-to-die-for-director-q-a?filter=

This screening continues our collaboration with Picturehouse Cinemas, bringing outstanding films and conversations to audiences in Southampton and beyond. We’d love to see you there—please feel free to share and spread the word!

Presented by the Film Studies Department (University of Southampton) The Film Studies Department at the University of Southampton join forces with Picturehouse Cinemas to present an exclusive screening of Films to Die For, directed by Prof Lúcia Nagib FBA (University of Reading), at Harb

04/03/2026

We are thrilled that colleagues and former students from the Department of Film have received nominations for the 2026 BAFTSS Publication and Practice Awards.

Professor Michael Williams' co-edited collection “Call Me By Your Name: Perspectives on the Film” (Intellect, 2025) isnominated for this year’s “Best Edited Collection.”

Our recent MA graduate Thomas O’Brien's essay “How are animated representations of Zombies in Scooby-Doo on Zombie Island (1997) and ParaNorman (2012) used to represent retribution against imperialist systems?” has been nominated for “Best Essay by an Undergraduate or Master’s Student.”

Our recent PhD graduate Dr Zoë Viney Burgess has been nominated in the practice award for "Best Videographic Criticism" for her “Ciné-Clubs and the Elision of Women's Labour.”

And Dr James Slaymaker, another recent PhD graduate, has been nominated for "Best First Monograph" for "Essay Cinema in the Digital Era" (Palgrave MacMillan).

Well done all!

10/09/2025

New publication, co-edited by our very own Ruby Cheung and including contributions by Shelley Cobb and Jara Fernández Meneses!

"Global Film Policies" challenges conventional analyses of film policy as a stand-alone public policy confined within national boundaries and usually focused on supports for film production. The book argues for a more multi-faceted approach, extending beyond national boundaries and broadening its scope to recognise how other forms of policy pertain to film, including tax, labour, language and education.

Essential reading for those working on policy, business, and creative industries!

03/07/2024

🎬Curious about studying film? Join us at our Open Day on Sat 6 July and Sun 7 July! Film subject talks kick off at 11:15am and 2:15pm in Lecture Theatre C, Avenue Campus. 🎥 Meet our passionate film lecturers and students at the Humanities marquee throughout the day—they’re ready to answer all your burning questions about our programmes. More info: https://www.southampton.ac.uk/open-days/undergraduate

Experience our undergraduate open days in your own time. Get subject talks, taster lectures, accommodation tours, admissions advice & answers to your questions.

28/09/2021

Here we go! Today we are running our induction sessions and we can’t wait to welcome all our new and returning undergraduate Film students back to campus! Our colleague Dr Malcolm Cook will be there in person to give you all the essential info and the rest of us look forward to seeing you next week when teaching starts. How exciting to be watching films (and other audiovisual media) together again!

01/07/2021

The Film department at University of Southampton are looking for a full time, permanent Senior Teaching Fellow. If you are interested in joining us, please check out the following. Do share widely to those who may be interested!

https://jobs.soton.ac.uk/Vacancy.aspx?ref=1399021AR

22/06/2021

The ‘little apparatus’: 100 years of 9.5mm film

16, 17, 18 June 2022

University of Southampton

An international conference hosted in person and online by the Department of Film Studies’ ‘Centre For International Film Research’ at the University of Southampton.

December 1922 will mark the centenary of the introduction of 9.5mm film to the French cinematographic market. Pathé Freres first launched their ‘Pathé Baby’ home cinema system on domestic territory in time for the Christmas season, with the promise of a soon to follow lightweight and modestly priced cine-camera using the same narrow gauge, that could fit in a vest pocket (1923, pp. 48–50). In time, the new gauge became available elsewhere -arriving just ahead of Kodak’s 16mm film/cinema system and together signalling the first major boom in amateur filmmaking.

This event aims to reflect on the diverse use of 9.5mm film throughout its 100 year history and create space for scholars, archivists and curators to explore and share new research in the field while opening up new avenues for inquiry.

Hosted by the University of Southampton this international conference will accommodate a dual approach - in-person and online for contributions exploring/considering the global reach of 9.5mm film culture. International speakers are encouraged and our proposed format will allow for virtual attendance via live streamed sessions or recorded content.





The conference organisers are delighted to confirm keynote addresses by Dr Ryan Shand (Ravensbourne University London) and Dr Annamaria Motrescu-Mayes (University of Cambridge).

We welcome proposals for 20-minute papers and for 1hr 30min conference panels, from scholars, archivists, and curators around the world at any stage in their academic careers. We are especially interested in interdisciplinary submissions and encourage papers and contributions across the wide use and application of 9.5mm film in the last 100 years.

We would also like to invite regional, national and international archives to present curated packages of film as well as presentations on 9.5mm collections and filmmakers within their holdings. The organisers welcome papers on topics including, but not limited to:

9.5mm as an amateur gauge
Professional/Avant Garde/artists’ filmmaking using 9.5mm
‘Cult’ 9.5
9.5mm and the democratisation of filmmaking
9.5mm and challenges of representation and diversity in amateur film collections
The archival challenge/digitisation agendas/funding/historiography
Curating amateur film gauges, especially 9.5mm
9.5mm and global experience of amateur technologies
9.5mm and ‘The Cinema In Your Home’
9.5mm and colour film
Abstracts of maximum 250 words and bios of maximum 75 words should be submitted via the Google Form on the conference website (Conference Website) by 17:00 (GMT) on 17 October 2021, with decisions expected in early December 2021.

Submissions must include the presenters’ full name, institutional affiliations and the preferred method of attendance (in person or online).

Conference Website

Conference date: 16, 17, 18 June 2022

Deadline for proposals: 17 October 2021

Please submit proposals via the Google Form on the conference website https://sites.google.com/view/100yearsof95mmconference/home

If you have any questions please do get in touch by email: [email protected]



References

Anonymous (1923) ‘Cinematography’, The British Journal of Photography, 70(3273), pp. 48–50.

‘the little apparatus’ Clerc, L. P. (1924) ‘New Apparatus’, The British Journal of Photography, 71(3325), pp. 52–53.

Image credit: Illustration from the cover of 'Instructions on using The Baby Cine Camera' 1925