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Screen Media Research Centre
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The Screen Media Research Centre has established a substantial body of research in a range of screen media, principally film and television and areas of digital media including videogames.
Four themes provide major strands within and across which much of the work is organized:
• Cult Media and Transgression
• Spectacle, Documentary and the Real
• National and Transnational Film and Television
• The Politics of Representation
The centre is also home to the Cult Film Archive, and internationally recognized resource dedicated to the study of a range of cult films. The holdings of the archive, currently some 4,000 titles, are used in connection with the research of members of staff, links with the film industry and in support of undergraduate and postgraduate teaching, including a unique MA in Cult Film and Television. The archive is also host to the refereed journal Intensities: The Journal of Cult Media.
Areas in which members of the centre have published books recognized in the field include British, European, Hollywood, American Independent, Hong Kong and Third cinema; cult film, science fiction, comedy, horror and the cinema of he occult, the integration of video practice and theory, Marxism and the media, sex and the cinema, environmentalism and cinema, videogames, contemporary British and American television, the media ‘effects’ debate, and journalism theory and practice. Members have also produced many edited collections and large numbers of books chapters, journal articles and conference papers in these and other areas of research interest. For more details, see individual staff entries below.
The centre has organized a number of conferences (details below) and runs a series of research seminars that has attracted leading figures in the field, in addition to separate seminars for postgraduate research students. PGR students in the subject area in the School of Arts automatically become members of the centre.
Among other ongoing research projects, the centre is currently host to Television News, Current Affairs and Young People: The Problem of ‘Disconnection’, a three-year £108,000 project funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council.
Recent investment in the Screen Media Research Centre has included a number of staff appointments, including a professors and a reader and two internal promotions to professor. Expanded facilities have included new spaces and equipment for the Cult Film Archive and the provision of a Games Lab equipped with a range of hardware and software, for expanding research activities in digital games. Research in this area can also draw upon motion capture resources in the Brunel Information Technology Laboratory (BITLab), a £1.25 million University research facility designed to facilitate collaboration between science, engineering and the arts. The BITLab is also available for use in practice-related work in digital film/video. Work in this area will also benefit from a £1.5 million investment by the University in the conversion of additional new spaces for Film and TV Studies at Brunel, including new edit suites and practical spaces for the subject area from Autumn 2007
The centre is run by a Director, Prof. Geoff King (geoff.king@brunel.ac.uk) and Deputy Director, Prof. Julian Petley (julian.petley@brunel.ac.uk).
Staff (with links giving detail on individual research interests)
Conferences organized:
Cine-Excess II, The ICA, London 1-3 May 2008.
Cine-Excess: An International Conference on Global Cult Film, Apollo West End Cinema, Regent Street, London, May 2007. A high-profile three-day event in central London, organized by Brunel in conjunction with the Sci-Fi London film festival. Conference opened by special guest speaker, film director John Landis (The Blues Brothers, Animal House, An American Werewolf in London), and including a special recorded video message from Roger Corman, the acknowledge godfather of cult and exploitation film. Now planned to be an annual event.
Documentary Now! A Conference on the Contemporary Context and Possibilities for the Documentary Genre, Birkbeck College, Malet Street, London, April 2007. A sell-out event bringing together academics, documentary filmmakers and interested members of the public to discuss current trends in documentary practice, from the return of documentary as a theatrical box office phenomenon, to broadcast television and beyond. Also planned to become an annual event.
The Spectacle of the Real: From Hollywood to Reality TV and Beyond, Brunel University, January 2003. A two-day event focused on a wide variety of conjunctions of spectacle and constructions of ‘reality’, in film, television and wider cultural phenomena. Full versions of selected papers published in Geoff King (ed.), The Spectacle of the Real: From Hollywood to Reality TV and Beyond, Bristol: Intellect Press, 2005.
Science Fictions: 9/9/99, Brunel University, September 1999. A one day conference exploring various aspects of science fiction in the media.
Television News, Young People and Politics Conference: Generation Disconnected
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