Research
Teaching is informed by research and all good research begins in the classroom. The classes offered within the Cinema Studies programme reflect the research interests of the academic staff. We are particularly excited to offer a new 300 level class on the nouvelle vague and other “new wave” movements of the 1960's as this is a shared area of expertise for Drs Wiles and Wright. During her current study leave, Dr Wiles plans to finish her manuscript on the films of Jacques Rivette, due for publication by the University of Illinois Press, and Dr Wright has published essays on Jean-Luc Godard.
One of the most influential directors in the history of French cinema, Rivette began his career as a filmmaker with Paris nous appartient (1958-60), regarded today as a key work of the French New Wave, the avant-garde movement that transformed filmmaking by taking it out of commercial studios and into the streets of Paris. Dr Wiles' book will give a concise and thorough account of Rivette's career as a director, placing strong emphasis on his interest in the relationship between theater and film. The book will explain the various intellectual interests that have shaped the director's career, including Sartrean existentialism, Barthesian post-structuralism, feminism and the radical theater of the 1960s.
Cinema Studies has largely overlooked the relationship between the creative act and the work of criticism by maintaining a strict opposition between artistic practice and academic research. Dr Wright was challenged by his class on Documentary and the Essay Film to make a film of his own that sought to revise the accepted understanding of the relationship between theory and practice as they are currently defined within Film Studies. Scuppered was inspired by the experience of 100 Russian sailors marooned in Lyttelton in 1998. “Of Fish and Film” was published in the electronic film journal, Rouge. DVD copies are still available!
Cinema Studies research areas:
- Women and film
- French New Wave
- Queer Theory
- Theatricality in Film
- Documentary and the essay film
- Film history, theory and criticism
- Time, memory and exile in film
- Contemporary world cinema
- The concept of national cinema
- New Zealand Film
- American Independent Cinema since the 1960s