Work of Film Studies honoured at BAFTSS awards 2024

The work of staff and students was honoured at the British Association of Film, Television and Screen Studies awards 2024.

Dr Lucy Fife Donaldson was awarded runner up in the 'best videographic criticism' award for her audiovisual essay, 'Isn't that going to be awfully dull and drab?' George Hoyningen-Huene's use of neutrals. The judges said: "A meticulously researched and innovative analysis of George Hoyningen-Huene's pioneering use of neutral shades in colour design. Fife Donaldson's essay illustrates that color consultants in the Eastmancolor era, such as George Hoyningen-Huene, departed from the guidelines set by Kalmus and Technicolor and as a result, these newfound creative liberties, influenced partly by the characteristics of the emerging film emulsions and a departure from the Technicolor spectacle led Hoyningen-Huene to introduce a monochromatic color palette that aimed for a more desaturated and naturalistic aesthetic. Through a captivating blend of textual interpretation and archival investigation, this essay was applauded by all the judges for its insightful contribution to the understanding of visual motifs and the tone of colour."

Dr Isabel Seguí contributed a chapter to Incomplete: The Feminist Possibilities of the Unfinished Film (University of California Press, edited by Alix Beeston and Stefan Solomon), which won 'best edited collection'. The Judges said: "A strong and nuanced addition to the scholarship on feminist film history. Methodologically rigorous, the volume offers a new corrective to existing male-centric auteurist approaches to unfinished films and incomplete cinema."

Julie Jaresova (UG, 2019-2023) received the runner-up award in the category of 'best essay by an undergraduate or masters student' for her essay Radioactive Aesthetics and Celluloid's Body: How Can Radioactive Aesthetics Shape a Sense of Place and Time? (completed as part of FM4129: Film Materiality). The judges said: "This essay engages with topics of great contemporary relevance: it provides a thought-provoking examination of photographic and filmmaking practices which engage with toxic matter and radioactive contamination following Fukushima's nuclear disaster. Jaresova demonstrates a sound understanding of the cameraless work of Shimpei Takeda, Yoi Kawakubo, and Tomonari Nishikawa, drawing on these case studies and the tensions at their core to provide a wider reflection on the global and temporal scope of environmental degradation. This essay is supported by detailed research; the writing is engaging, sophisticated and confident."