Department of Film Studies

Former PhD students

Dr Canan Balan | Dr Yun-hua Chen | Dr Ruby Cheung | Dr David Fleming | Dr Fredrik Gustafsson | Dr Yun Mi Hwang | Dr Lars Kristensen | Dr Serazer Pekerman | Dr Jennie Rutherford | Dr Vlastimir Sudar | Dr John Trafton

Dr Canan Balan

Thesis: Changing Pleasures of Spectatorship: Early and Silent Cinema in Istanbul

Early cinema studies do not yet allow for generalizations or comparisons across the globe; most of the scholarship focuses on examination of early cinema-going practices in America and Western Europe. I believe, however, that there is much to be gained from investigating the early cinematic spectatorship culture in countries like Turkey, too.

Although the accuracy of sources is questionable, the first public exhibitions in Istanbul are said to have happened in a French café Salle Sponeck in 1896, only a year after Lumière Brothers' well-known projection. Salle Sponeck was located in a district called Pera which was seen as the European part of the city. Pera, as a place of the beginning of cinema in Istanbul, thus becomes a code-name for the association between ‘cinema' and ‘Europe'. It may seem to support the arguments declaring cinematograph was a western form of pleasure and entertainment to the Turkish people. The identity of the first projectionist is also arguable. It was either D. Henri or Sigmund Weinberg responsible for the initial projections, what is more striking to me is that both of them were "non-Muslims who brought "the invention of a devil" to a multi-confessional imperial society (Ottoman Empire) which would 30 years later time experience a radical cultural transformation into a secular nation state (Turkish Republic), while meanwhile the ‘cinema of attractions' was being replaced by narrative cinema.

In my research project, I aim to explore the relationship between the Turkish modernity and spectatorship culture within the context of late 19th century's viewing habits and early cinema-going in Istanbul. My main focus is on Istanbul and spectatorship before and just after the cinematograph's arrival in Istanbul. By focusing on this period, I aim to understand the novelty and evolution of viewing conventions and early cinema practices in Turkey.

The initial idea for this research came from the works of Turkish film and media scholars who were my teachers at Istanbul University where I received my BA and MA degrees in Radio-TV and Cinema (BA in 2001 and MA in 2004) and from colleagues at Bahcesehir University where I worked as a teaching assistant in the in Film and Television for four years (2001-2005). My current supervisor at St Andrews is a silent cinema expert, Prof. Graham Petrie. I also benefit from the expertise of Prof. Dina Iordanova who specializes in Balkan cinema and history.

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Dr Balan successfully defended her thesis and obtained her PhD in 2010. She is currently employed at Istanbul Sehir University.

Dr Yun-hua Chen

Email: yc292@st-andrews.ac.uk

Thesis: Mosaic Space in Cosmopolitan Peripatetic Directors: Michael Haneke, Hou Hsiao-hsien, Atom Egoyan and Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu

Office: Resources Room, 99 North St.

My thesis is about a group of cosmopolitan peripatetic filmmakers including Michael Haneke, Hou Hsiao-hsien, Atom Egoyan and Alejandro González Iñárritu, who constantly cross national borders either for personal reasons or due to the demands of film funding and location shooting. Through travelling and making films in different languages and contexts, these filmmakers construct a uniquely personal milieu which incorporates a network of filmmaking resources and influences their spatial aesthetics. Their works reflect the perception of space held by their specific contexts and at the same time demonstrate collective concerns about contemporary space that transcend boundaries. This results in a mosaic space which integrates diverse spatial configurations both in terms of the mode of production, the representation of space, and formal screen space. Places and non-places, deterritorialisation and reterritorialisation, the smooth and the striated, the actual and the virtual, all alternate, while the local and the global become inextricably interwoven. Narrative is often intertwined into a mosaic of encounters through montage, which is a site of exchange between diverse spatial configurations. Other means of building mosaic space employed by cosmopolitan peripatetic auteurs include fragmentation through framing, disjunction between the spaces of the setting and those of the crew and cast and the layering of mise-en-scène.

I received a BA in Foreign Languages and Literatures from National Taiwan University and pursued an MSc in Developmental Linguistics at the University of Edinburgh and a Master II at the Université de Grenoble III Stendhal in France. In 2006 I studied for an MSc in Film Studies and completed a dissertation entitled ‘A Tale of Two Cities: City Spaces in Michael Haneke's Films' arguing for a more fluid reading of Haneke's city spaces in terms of the indiscernibility between places and non-places. I started my PhD programme in October 2007 under the supervision of Dr David Martin-Jones who is an expert on Deleuzian interpretations of cinema and transnational identity in world cinema. My research interests include transnational auteurs, spatial aesthetics and world cinemas.

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Dr. Chen successfully defended her thesis and obtained her PhD in 2011.

Dr Ruby Cheung

Email: wyrc@st-andrews.ac.uk

Thesis: Hong Kong Cinema 1982-2002: The Quest for Identity during Transition

Being a Hong Kong native, I was brought up in the period of volatile historical, political, social, economic and cultural changes. On 1 July 1997, which I recall as a rainy day, the people of Hong Kong said goodbye to its ‘foster mother' UK. From now on they had to find ways to regain their Chinese identity within the ‘one country, two systems' framework. Fostering this new national identity was not a straightforward task, however, and preserving Hong Kong's freedom was not as easy as it seemed. There was a lot of social confusion, economic turbulence, and existential anxiety, and tensions of one kind or another still persist.

Along with a range of other media and cultural forms cinema reflected the spirit of uneasiness and apprehension; it is films that related to the matters of this perturbed transition that I investigate in my doctoral research. My focus is on the cultural-political identity of Hong Kong Cinema, and my focus is on films by directors such as Fruit Chan, Wong Kar-wai and Ann Hui.

I graduated in advertising from the University of Colorado at Boulder, USA and then worked in public relations in my native Hong Kong. I then acquired an MA in Mass Communications by distance learning from the University of Leicester in the UK. In Hong Kong I worked for various large companies as their corporate public relations and spokesperson, and eventually took up a job as a professional writer for the Hong Kong branch of a worldwide wealth management company. The years of working in the corporate world allowed me to define my goals more clearly and to decide to pursue my other main interest: studying and writing about film and culture. After completing my PhD in film studies I would like to pursue a career in academia.

My supervisor at St. Andrews is Prof. Dina Iordanova, whose expertise in international cinema and in the cinemas of cultures in transition is most beneficial for my work. I also profit from the interactions with Dr. Scott MacKenzie, who has done work on national and minoritarian cinemas, and with Dr. David Martin-Jones, who is interested in representations of national identity in the cinemas of Asia.

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Dr. Cheung successfully defended her thesis and obtained her PhD in 2008. She was employed as a Research Associate on the Dynamics of World Cinema project in the Centre for Film Studies at St Andrews and is now Assistant Professor in Creative Industries in Zhuhai, China.

Dr David Fleming

Thesis: Drugs, Danger, Delusions (and Deleuzians?): Extreme Film-Philosophy Journeys Into and Beyond the Parallel Body and Mind

As an undergraduate I studied for a Master of Arts at the University of Aberdeen in English and Film Studies and also took an opportunity to live and study abroad on an exchange year where I attended the University of New Mexico. My undergraduate dissertation was in the discipline of Film Studies and was titled ‘The Films of David Fincher through an auteur paradigm.' I then proceeded to completed a Master of Letters (MLitt) in Visual Culture, also at the University of Aberdeen, which was a course that engaged with issues ranging from culturally constructed modes of perceiving and seeing through to more traditional and recognisable Film Studies courses. My MLitt dissertation was titled ‘A Model for Spectatorship within Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey' and examined a perceived model relating to the relationship in cinema between a ‘cinematic narrator' and the spectator and examined how this model seems to be woven into much of the director's work, and most identifiably within his 1968 masterpiece 2001.

My interests in the cinematic medium are wide and varied and I enjoy cinema of all genres and nationalities but my research interests lie most particularly in modes of cinematic narration and I am currently working upon a thesis that examines issues regarding drug use and the representations of altered states of consciousness in the cinema. I am currently researching my first chapter which investigates changing trends in the narrative conventions of cinema during the 1960s in America. I am currently looking into how the representations of drug use and altered states of consciousness in 1960s cinema worked to substantially alter and transform more traditional and well established conventions of narration. This chapter hopes to engage with films from the underground and avant-garde cinema as well as Independent and ‘Classical' texts from around the period and will attempt to chart the influences upon and understand the reasons behind these changes. In future chapters I hope to engage with other national cinemas from other historic periods in order to draw parallels and mark differences.

My supervisor for this project is Dr David Martin-Jones who is an expert on world cinema, narrative and national and transnational identity in international cinema, as well as American Independent Film.

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Dr. Fleming successfully defended his thesis and obtained his PhD in 2010. He is currently employed at the University of Nottingham Ningbo in China.

Dr Fredrik Gustafsson

Email: fg223@st-andrews.ac.uk

Thesis: Hasse Ekman – a question of authorship in a national context.

Office: Resources Room, 99 North St./ Office Hour: Fridays 10-11.

Swedish cinema undoubtedly has a good reputation, worldwide. This reputation is partly due to its directors, such as the masters of the silent era, Victor Sjöström and Mauritz Stiller (and the quite recently re-discovered George af Klercker) and later directors such as Alf Sjöberg, Jan Troell, Lasse Hallström, Lukas Moodysson and, obviously, Ingmar Bergman, who looms over all the others like a hawk over a family of mice. The reputation also stems from its actors and actresses such as Greta Garbo, Ingrid Bergman (no relation), Max von Sydow and Harriet Andersson.

But still a large part of Swedish cinema is hidden below the radar, namely the two decades after Victor Sjöström and Mauritz Stiller moved to Hollywood in the early 1920s. There's a blank until the 1950s when the international discovery of Bergman and Sjöberg brought back an interest in Swedish cinema. What's striking though is how little is known today about the years that went before, even among scholars. This lack of knowledge leads to a problematic lack of context when someone like Ingmar Bergman is discussed. He did not rise out of nowhere; he came from a vibrant cinema culture, and if this is not taken into account, it will make for a flawed assessment of Bergman's career. So in my thesis I will discuss this era, with focus on the 1940s, which I would argue is something of a renaissance in Swedish cinema. And the leading light of this renaissance was Hasse Ekman, writer, director, producer, actor and composer. In the 1940s and early 1950s Ekman was Bergman's arch rival, and his equal, if not his superior. With my thesis I have three aims then. 1) to look at an important but forgotten  era. 2) to look at an important filmmaker, and 3) by combining context and authorship, discuss and challenge many ideas about authorship.

Personally, I'm a film historian, with a keen interest in film aesthetics. My interest in, and knowledge of, cinema history particularly covers Western, Iranian, Indian and East Asian cinema. I have two Master's degrees from Stockholm University, one in Film History and Theory, and one in The History of Ideas. I've worked for six years at the Swedish Film Institute, one year of which I worked at the Ingmar Bergman Archives, responsible for going through all of his personal correspondence and cataloguing the letters. I've also worked as Bergman coordinator at the Swedish Institute, organising Bergman festivals all over the world. I write on film at http://fredrikonfilm.blogspot.com and I write a regular DVD column in a Swedish film magazine.

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Dr Fredrik Gustafsson successfully passed his viva in 2012 and now works in the Swedich Film Institute. He continues to write on Scandinavian cinema, Questions of authorship and philosophy in global cinema, and How audiences respond to, understand and interpret films (or narrative in general).

Dr Yun Mi Hwang

Email: ymh@st-andrews.ac.uk

Thesis: South Korean Sageuk: History, Heritage, and Cultural Industry

Office: Resource Room, 99 North Street

By successfully defending its domestic market from Hollywood invasion and enthusiastically promoting its auteurs in the international film circuit, South Korean cinema has been enjoying growing recognition in recent years. One trend that stands out from the diverse and ever-changing Korean film scenery is the revival of historical dramas/sageuk. Sageuk is a blanket word that can be applied to any films set in pre-modern past, regardless of the genre, budget, and degree of historicity. Each year expensive, elaborate and successful period films are showcased to the audience; the filmmakers are ever more obsessed with venturing into and making sense of the past. The trend was epitomised in early 2006 when King and the Clown attracted more than12 million audiences nation-wide, making it the 2^nd highest grossing film in the history of Korean cinema. In such a way sageuk has made an impact on the national film industry, now rivalling with mainstream genres such as gangster action, romantic comedy, and Korean blockbuster.

In my thesis, I aim to illuminate on the general trends of South Korean sageuk films since the 2000s. I take both a diachronic approach by studying the historiography of sageuk and a synchronic view by examining the social, industrial and political contexts in Korea at the turn of the new century to explain the multiple-factors behind what Vera Dika calls the ‘culture-wide pull to the past'. The thesis is an original research concerning one of the neglected topics in Korean film studies. I take particular interest in how the burgeoning cultural content industry has facilitated the cycle of heritage commodity, carving a space for sageuk in the national heritage industry. In four textual analysis chapters, I look at historical dramas including Untold Scandal, Blood Rain, and Portrait of a Beauty. I also discuss the representation of the colonial period with such films like Modern Boy in the final section of my thesis.

Born and raised in South Korea, I received BA in English Literature and Language Education from University of Ulsan, and worked as a member of the teaching staff at a secondary school. I came to UK in 2004 to pursue two Master's degree - MSc in Comparative/General Literature and MEd in TESOL - both from the University of Edinburgh. I am currently co-supervised by Dr. David Martin-Jones and Dr. Belen Vidal (King's College London). My research interests include adaptation studies, Asian cinemas, heritage industry and tourism, representation of ethnicity and race in popular culture.

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Dr. Hwang successfully defended her thesis and obtained her PhD in 2011. Dr. Hwang now teaches Film at the University in Ulzan, South Korea. 

Dr Lars Kristensen

Thesis: Russians Abroad in Post-communist Cinema

While doing research on the Russian filmmaker Aleksei Balabanov, certain questions kept hounding me. How does the academic deal with ugly and foul images of chauvinism, racism and nationalism? How to deal academically with a film like Balabanov's Brat 2 (2000), which by having the hero of film travelling abroad took Russian chauvinism to new heights? What had changed in the post-Soviet context which triggered such depiction of antagonistic attitudes towards the West? These questions lead to another question: How is the post-Soviet Russian abroad treated in other national cinemas? My study is born out of a desire to address films that depict Russians outside the Russian nation after the fall of the Soviet Union. These are films, which by representing the encounter of Russian national identity with travel abroad, testify to the foundation of new socio-political formations of post-Soviet Russia.

Since 1991, Russians have emerged in many different national contexts, however, the investigation concentrates on the following cinematic areas: Post-Soviet Russian cinema, Russian transnational cinema, and European and Israeli cinema. Hence, the films that are in my focus span from the popular Russian comedy of Okno v Parizh (Mamin, 1994), over Kafe V'Limon (Gorovets, 1994) andKavkazskyi plennik (Bodrov, 1996),to Last Resort (Pawlikovski, 2000, UK) and Lilya 4-ever (Moodysson, 2002).

After studying for my BA in Eastern European Studies at the University of Copenhagen, I received in 2002 an MA (Russian and Film/TV) from the University of Glasgow. In 2004, I completed a MPhil (research) degree on the Russian filmmaker Aleksei Balabanov and, subsequently, I taught Russian and Comparative Literature at the Slavonic section at Glasgow. In 2006, I made the jump to Film Studies by taking on my research, under the supervision of Prof. Dina Iordanova, at University of St Andrews. My research interests are national cinema, postcolonial theory and visual anthropology

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Dr. Kristensen successfully defended his thesis and obtained his PhD in 2010. He has worked as a Research Assistant at the University of Central Lancashire. His edited book on Postcommunist Cinema in Russia and Eastern Europe was published by Routledge in 2012. He has now been appointed Lecturer in Gaming at Högskolan I Skövde/University of Skövde in Sweden.

Dr Serazer Pekerman

Email: bsp6@st-andrews.ac.uk

Thesis: Framed Intimacy-Representation of the Female Body in Transnational Cinemas

Office: Resource Room, 99 North Street

I received my BA in Architecture from the Middle East Technical University, Ankara. During my undergraduate studies I specialised in representation, photography and graphic arts. I decided to pursue a career in digital media, animation and the moving image and accordingly worked at various companies as a designer in different fields. During this period I was able to take up the opportunity to work in the film making industry. After working as a tutor in various filmmaking and story telling workshops in Istanbul and Paris, I wanted to broaden my academic profile. I was accepted for the Graduate Film and TV Program at the University of Bahcesehir and was also offered work as an instructor at the Department of Visual Arts and Visual Communication Design where I taught Desktop Publishing, Web Design, and Basic Design.

In my MA thesis; "Spatial Configurations in the Cinema of Serdar Akar", I studied perception and representation of filmic space in contemporary Turkish Cinema, as exemplified in three films of Serdar Akar. After my MA degree in Film and TV, I worked in the department of Film and TV at Istanbul Bilgi University for two years. In my first year I was a teaching assistant in Film Theory, Non-Fiction Film Theory and History, Video Production, Turkish Cinema, and International Cinemas, and in my second year, an instructor in Applied Media Aesthetics and Program as Presentation Format. During and after studying film and architecture, my focus shifted towards the movement of bodies in space and the sense of touch as main narrative tools.

At present I am particularly interested in the haptics of filmic space. I intend to study the sense of touch and eroticism related to the representation of intimacy. I would like to investigate how intimacy of the female body is represented in contemporary international cinema. Analyzing an exemplary corpus of contemporary films from Europe and Middle East I shall propose intimacy as a narrative tool in international cinema. In this comparative study, Turkish cinema will have a central role as being in-between east and west both geographically and culturally. My supervisor at St Andrews is Dr. David Martin-Jones, an expert on world cinema and transnational identity. I am also indebted to Bernard Bentley, an expert on Spanish Cinema.

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Dr Serazer Pekerman successfully defended her thesis and was awarded her PhD in 2010. 

Dr Jennie Rutherford

Thesis: Sites of Struggle: Representations of Family in Spanish Film 1996-2004

Traditionally the family has played a central role in Spanish society. After a fratricidal civil war (1936-39), during which an estimated one million Spaniards were killed, Francisco Franco's dictatorship lasted until his death in 1975. His policies, which were strongly influenced by Catholic doctrines, politicised the family by equating it with the state and promoting it as the ultimate example of moral purity, unity and firm leadership.

Censorship ensured that this hegemonic discourse was perpetuated in all forms of artistic creation. However, starting with the subversive work of directors such as Carlos Saura and José Luis Borau towards the end of the dictatorship, and continuing throughout the transition to democracy (1975 - 1982) and into the 1990s, this idealisation has been deconstructed through the presentation of increasingly dysfunctional and fragmented families.

Using a framework based around theories of gender, my research focuses on films from the last ten years which deal with violence in relation to renegotiated representations of the family. I will be concentrating on films by Icíar Bollaín, Achero Mañas, Fernando León and Chus Gutiérrez.

I graduated from St Andrews in 2002 with an MA in Spanish. After working for a year in London I decided to return to university to pursue my fascination with Spanish film. At this early stage in my research the idea of pursuing a career in academia is appealing, however I am also interested in the possibility of using my expertise to work in the cultural sector.

My supervisor at St Andrews is Bernard Bentley, whose extensive knowledge of, and enthusiasm for, Spanish cinema are invaluable to my research. In addition, I am also able to take advantage of the expertise of Belén Vidal, who has worked on feminist rewritings of the past and contemporary Spanish film.

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Dr. Rutherford successfully defended her thesis and obtained her PhD in 2010.

Dr Vlastimir Sudar

Thesis: The Life and Work of Aleksandar Petrovic: The Portrait of an Artist as an East European Dissident

Aleksandar Petrovic is one of the most influential film directors from the Balkans. His international recognition came with the success of I Even Met Happy Gypsies at the Cannes Film Festival in 1967. The film was one of the first to be spoken mainly in the Romany language and brought its author his second nomination for the Best Foreign Language Film at the Oscars. In most of his films, the complex relationship of the social order - particularly a strict socialist variant - and the restless spirit of human agency is playfully examined. The films he left behind are an invaluable portrait of one system, country and culture, now perished after the tragic civil war that destroyed Yugoslavia.

Petrovic's sharp depiction of the contradictions hampering the new system and state, particularly in his film It Rains in My Village (1968) and in his rendering of Bulgakov's Master and Margarita (1972) strained his relationship with the Communist Party. Although he was a member of the Party, his difficulties with the official 'party line' meant that he spent the late seventies in exile, making films in France and Germany, while the slow process of rehabilitation at home began in the early eighties. The demise of the socialist block brought a terminal crisis in Yugoslavia before the rehabilitation was finished, and Petrovic died in 1994, largely forgotten.

My evident motive in pursuing this research is hopefully to reinstate Petrovic and his work in the discourse of film theory and history. His inherent link to the context of the Balkan culture was of additional interest to my research, since I myself was born in the former Yugoslavia.

My interest in film and photography brought me to study film and video as part of the Fine Art course at London's Central Saint Martin's College of Art and Design, graduating in 1997. My graduation film Out was screened both nationally and internationally, as were the other three short films I made afterwards. I worked extensively in film and the fashion and art industries, while also lecturing. I taught filmmaking and film culture frequently to various levels. My academic interest in film is another imminent cause behind the research in life and work of Aleksandar Petrovic.

My supervisor is Prof Dina Iordanova, an expert in Balkan cinema.

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Dr Sudar successfully defended his thesis and obtained his PhD in 2007. He is currently employed at the University of the Arts London. Vlastimir Sudar's book on Aleksandar Petrovic is published in 2012 by Intellect.

Dr John Trafton

Email: jwt23@st-andrews.ac.uk

Thesis: Re-examining National Myth: Post 9/11 War Cinema as a Rejection of New Hollywood

Office: Resources Room, 99 North St., Office Hour: Wednesday, 11-12pm.

In October of 2012, Dr Trafton successfully defended his thesis titled Genre Memory and the Hollywood War Film: the Vietnam War Film, the Post-9/11 War Film, and how the Hollywood War Film writes History. In this dissertation, he explored the new war films of the twenty-first century as a continuing dialogue with the genre. War cinema constantly re-invents itself through Mikhail Bakhtin's notion of "genre memory" - providing the genre with new formal vocabularies and a new orientation. Placing the American Civil War at the origin of this genre memory, John argued that the representational modes that transcribed a visceral history of the American Civil War can be read as a rehearsal for the war films of the twentieth and twenty-first century. A monograph version of this thesis is currently under an advance contract with Wayne State University Press.

Comparing post-9/11 war films with Vietnam War films, John's dissertation examined how contemporary war films envision war's impact on culture and social space, explore how war refashions ideas about race and national identity, and re-imagine war's rewriting of the human psyche. Constructed in explicit relation to the Vietnam film, he argued that post-9/11 war films rehearse the history of war representation in American culture while also emphasizing the radically different culture of the present day. Rather than representing a departure from past forms of war representation, as has been argued by many theorists, he shows that contemporary American war films can be seen as the latest chapter in a long history of reimagining American military and cultural history in pictorial and narrative form. 

Dr Trafton's future research plans include a project on the subject of the historical film in world cinema. Through comparing recent historical films with historical films from earlier periods in film history, his aim is to show how approaches to cinematic representations of history have evolved in conjunction with recent developments in media culture. The goal of this research project is a contribution that further binds Film Studies with other disciplines. 

John has extensive teaching experience in film history, film theory, and film aesthetics. He has served as a teaching assistant in the Department of Film Studies from the spring of 2010 to the spring of 2012. He has also served in an unofficial capacity as a research assistant for Professor Robert Burgoyne. In the spring of 2012, he collaborated with Professor Burgoyne in producing an international symposium on war and cinema, featuring notable speakers such as Garrett Stewart, Ian Christie, and Elisabeth Bronfen. His professional experience also extends to the co-editing of the University of St. Andrews Centre for Film Studies Newsletter, a publication that has a readership of over 500 international scholars.

In addition to his PhD from St. Andrews and his MSc in Comparative Literature from the University of Edinburgh, John also has a degree in Film Production from Chapman University, with an emphasis on screenwriting. His experience at Chapman, plus over three years of work experience for film production companies and film productions (features and documentaries), qualifies him to teach the vocational aspects of film studies.