The Anita Loos Award

In 2014/15 the Department of Film Studies introduced a new award. The Anita Loos Award for the most Outstanding Undergraduate Essay in Film Studies provides an opportunity to celebrate and reward the original and cutting-edge work produced by students at St Andrews. Staff members can nominate an essay from each module, which is then reviewed by a panel of staff. Reading the nominated works is a real pleasure, highlighting both the wide range of modules and assessments offered by the Department, but also the hugely impressive work produced by the students.

2023/2024

Winning essay

Mikey Reid-Cain, “Not to Disappear Completely: Embodiment and Interactivity in Kid A Mnesia Exhibition,” written for FM4115: Sensory Cinema.

Other nominees

Eilish Campbell, “Archival Alteration and Historical Exclusion in Peter Jackson’s They Shall Not Grow Old (2018)” written for FM4104: Film and History.

Parthiv Chhabria, ‘Worshipping the Hag: Interpreting The Hagsploitation Genre, Queer Methods of Reception, and The Politics of Camp,” written for FM4306: Feminist Film Studies.

Phoebe Christian, "Borders of Belonging: Locating the Missing ‘Other’ in British New Town Films," written for FM4124 Race and Representation.

Serena Sandweiss, "“This is a Media War!”: The Influence of Media Coverage on the Portrayal of the 1991 Gulf War in Hollywood War Cinema," written for FM4106 War and Cinema.

Serena Sandweiss, ““Asking the Right Questions”: The Crucial Relationship between Landscape and Gender within True Detective: Night Country< and its Broader Significance for the Detective Television Drama, “ written for FM4122: Watching the Detectives: Murder, Mystery and the Media.

2022/2023

Winning essay

Omri Gardi, "Reclaiming Artifice, Accepting Naturalism: Sound in Contemporary British Student Films,” written for FM4308 Film Sound.

Special commendation

Julie Jaresova, "Radioactive Aesthetics and Celluloid’s Body: How can Radioactive Aesthetics Shape a Sense of Place and Time?” written for FM4129 Film Materiality.

Other nominees

Eilish Campbell, "Archiveology as a Means of Revisiting Female Representation in the Archive,” for FM4126 Film and the Archive.

Omri Gardi, "Showrunners Versus Creative Agency” Video Essay, for FM4126 Creativity in Screen Cultures.

Mikey Reid-Cain, "Deep Sea/Deep Time: Three Cinematic Portraits of Coastal New England,” for FM4113 Ecocinema.

Emily Taylor, "Comic Scene Analysis: Playtime (Jacques Tati, 1967),” for FM4121 Screen Comedy.

Maya Thompson, "National Trauma and the Thriller: Negotiating Genre Tropes in Cargo and Paradise Now” for FM4107 Cinema and Nation and "Performing the Performer: The Star Persona of Daniel Day-Lewis” for FM4116 Stars.

2021/22

Winning essay

Rory Gibb, "Looking In, Looking Out; Looking Up, Looking Down – The Power of the Gaze in Banlieue Cinema". This essay was written as part of FM4124 Race and Representation.

Special commendation

Matthew Gray, "Jia Zhangke and the Politics of Transcendence". This essay was written as part of FM4204 Asian Cinemas.

Other nominees

Sofiia Dabizha, "Things Left Unsaid: The Poetic Silence of Earth (1930) and Ivan's (1932) Political Voice", from FM4120 Silent Cinema.

Eva Fexy, "Paratexts, Patriarchy and Post-Reality Television: What The Bachelor's Paratext Reveals About the Series' Patriarchal Agenda and the Genre", from FM4128 Television Form and Content.

Rory Gibb, "Marie-France Pisier Archival Show & Tell", from FM4306 Feminist Film Studies.

Colman Goco, "Energy Consumption in Hollywood Film Production: Lighting and Transportation", from FM4113 Ecocinema

Molly Ketcheson, "Sensory Manipulation Horror: A Video Essay", from FM4119 Horror on Screen."

2020/21

Winning essay

Eva Fexy, "The Politics of Depicting the 'Uncomfortable' History of 'Comfort Women'". The essay was written as part of FM4102: Cinema and Politics.

Special commendation

Alistair Thompson, "The Americanisation of Nation in Sense8". The essay was written as part of FM4107: Cinema and Nation.

Other nominees

Elizabeth Bowie, "Error in the Etiquette Machine: The Comedy of Female Rudeness Vera Chytilová's Daisies", from FM4121: Screen Comedy.

Sofiia Dabizha, "Towards a Phenomenology of Interactive Film: Does Agency Imply Immersion?", from FM4115: Sensory Cinema. 

Lorna Govan, "Watching the Detectives Eat: Food, Gender and the Gourmand Detective", from FM4122: Watching the Detectives: Murder, Mystery and the Media.

2019/20

Winning essay

Audrey McBride, "Shiny Silver Seductions: analysing Edward Cullen’s whiteness in Twilight". The essay was written as part of FM4124: Race and Representation.

Special commendation 

Philippa Orme, ‘Tucking Good Drama? Documentary Diversions and Performing Subjects in RuPaul’s Drag Race UK (2019-)’. The essay was written as part of FM4303: Documentary Cinema.

Other nominees 

Georgina Beeby, ‘Examining the Function of Pretrauma Cinema: Wall-E and the Warning for our Future’, from FM4114: Film Genres. 

Sofia Desimone, ‘Bollywood in Glasgow: A Study of Nina’s Heavenly Delights’, from FM4205: Scotland and Cinema. 

Milo Farragher-Hanks, ‘The Spaces Of Genre And Power In Audition and Midsommar’, from FM4119: Horror on Screen. 

Hannah Haig, ‘How can the Television series Westworld (2016-present) and the film Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle (2017) be read as allegories for experiential cinema?’, from FM4108: Cinema and Media in the Digital Age. 

Peter Horan, ‘On artists film and video and postcolonialism’, from FM4123: Artists’ Film & Video. 

Elisabetta Laurence, ‘How do the films of Eric Khoo and Jack Neo visualise localism and multiculturalism in Singaporean culture?’, from FM4204: Asian Cinemas. 

Audrey McBride, ‘Our magnificent cinema café’: community and spatiality at the New Picture House Café, St Andrews’, from FM4109: Film and the Archive.  

Simona Mezzina, ‘Negotiating the “Latin Lover” image: the case of Marcello Mastroianni’, from FM4116: Stars. 

Declan Murphy, ‘Losing Grip on Reality: The Ephemeral and Sensorial Communication of Kinugasa Teinosuke’s Kuruta Ippeiji/A Page of Madness (1926)’, from FM4120: Silent Cinema. 

Noora Sharara, ‘The Willis Test and Eminem’s ‘Superman’ music video’, from FM4306: Feminist Film Studies. 

2018/19

Winning essay

Noora Sharara, "Pornographic Adaptations: Tales of a Woman Reused, Reduced, Recycled." The essay was written as part of FM4123 Artists’ Film and Video.

Other nominees

Milo Farragher-Hanks, ‘Over There and Back Here: The Changing Relationship of Home and the Battlefield in Veteran Narratives in American Cinema’ from FM4106 War and Cinema; and ‘Black Moods, Blackened Flesh: The Rise of 'Body Noir' in 21st Century Cinema’ from FM4114 Film Genres.

Victoria Herman, ‘Sex, Drugs, and Marginalization: Female Representation in Trainspotting and Layer Cake’ from FM4207 British Cinema: Conventions, Subversion and Outsiders.

Audrey McBride, ‘“I never know if I’m remembering something I saw in a picture or something I just made up. She’s a mystery” (Nancy Drew, 2007): Detecting the parents in contemporary children’s crime films’ from FM4122 Watching the Detectives: Murder, Mystery and the Media; and ‘It’s nothing to be afraid of’’: The manipulation of ‘natural referents’ in Electrical Storm’ from FM4113 Ecocinema: The Nature of Film.

Ksenia Mikhaleva, 'How did the Co-Production of Indian and Soviet Filmmakers Affect the Stylistic and Narrative Elements in the Indo-Soviet films in late 1950s and early 1980s' from FM4206 Cinemas of India.

Philippa Orme, ‘Rimmel's "I Will Not Be Deleted" Campaign: An Effective Model of Corporate Activism?’ for FM4110 Images and Impact: The Uses of Film.

Joey Stack, ‘The Soundtrack of Uncertainty: Sonic Narrative Construction and Identification in Alex Garland's Ex Machina’ from FM4308 Film Sound.

Catherine Thines, ‘Performative National Identities: Comparing Chris Hemsworth’s ‘Aussie Bloke’ Aesthetic to Cate Blanchett’s Camouflaging Star Persona’ from FM4107 Cinema and Nation.

2017/18

Winning essay

Amanda Curdt-Christiansen, "Hybridity in Singaporean Cinema: Othering the Self through Diaspora and Language Policies in Ilo Ilo and Letters from the South." The essay was written as part of FM4204 Asian Cinemas.

Runner up

Yu Ching Yau, “Taming the Wild Men of Formosa: Japanese colonial ideology in films depicting the subjugation of Taiwan’s Aborigine people circa 1920-30” from FM4120: Silent Cinema.

The other nominees were:

Max Cutting, “Haptic Audio-Visuality: A Sonic Response to Jennifer Barker’s ‘Skin’” from FM4115: Sensory Cinema.

Ruby Eleftheriotis, “Women as Urban Allegory: Exploring Shanghai’s modern anxieties through the site of the female body in 1930s Chinese Cinema” from FM4208: City in Asian Cinemas.

Katy Li, “The Haptic Gaze” from FM4306: Feminist Film Studies.

Catrin Moens, “Dear White People’s Exemplification of Tomás Gutiérrez Alea’s Political Film Theory” from FM4102: Cinema and Politics.

Victor Pillard, “Every Cause Got an Effect: An Assessment of Vice Documentaries and the Ethical Treatment of the Subject” from FM4303: Documentary Film.

Mina Radovic, “Preserving Yugoslav Cultural Memory through Un Dia De Vida” from FM4109: Film and the Archive.

Laszlo Szegedi, “Self-Performance and Self-Transcendence: The Star Trajectories of Shah Rukh Khan and John Malkovich” from FM4116: Film Stars.

Yu Ching Yau, Essay on Okja (2017) from FM4108: Cinema and Media in the Digital Age.

2016/17

Winning essay

Jaka Lombar, "Quietly humming along? Approaching Film Sound in the Digital Culture Through the Streaming of The Best Years of Our Lives (1946)." The essay was written as part of FM4308: Film Sound.

The other nominees were:

Hannah Ritchie, “‘We are women – what can we do?’: space and identity in Brick Lane and My Summer of Love” from FM4207: British Cinemas.

Kathryn Haldane, ‘The house as a site of gendered and class anxieties in the horror film” from FM4114: Film Genres.

Victor Pilard, “Traumatic Recollection: Fantasy, Isolation and Guilt in Ari Folman’s Waltz with Bashir” from FM4106: War Cinema.

Erin Powers, “Does the work of costume designers stand out as creative contribution? Can it make a difference for the success of a film?” from FM4118: Film and Fashion.

Tomasz Hollanek, “Visualizing Cosmologies. From the Orrery via the Kulturfilm to the Biophilia App” from FM4117: Modernity and the Moving Image.

2015/16

Winning essay

Sam Mills, "Shaping Physicality and Forming Rhythm: Technology, Gender, and the Pulse of Editing." The essay was written as part of FM4115: Sensory Cinema.

Other nominees

Jaka Lombar, “Negotiating Meaning within Late Capitalism: The Postsecular Cinema of Takeshi Kitano’s Sonatine (1993)” from FM4204: Asian Cinemas.

Fidan Gasimova, “Magazines Produced and Magazines Consumed: A Case Study of Fandom During World War II” from FM4114: Film and the Archive.

Fidan Gasimova, “Ghosts of the Millennium: Technological Anxiety in New Japanese Horror Cinema” from FM4108: Digital Cinema.

Christine Kim, “Examining Marie Antoinette As A Postmodern Work — How Sofia Coppola Uses Vernacular Art To Refashion The Concepts Of Historicity And Modernity” from FM4112: Images of the Past.

Philip Cleary, “Star Trajectories: Greta Garbo and Elizabeth Taylor” from FM4116: Stars

2014/15

Winning essay

Amelia Markham, "'This Other Eden': The Representation of the English Countryside in Costume Drama since the 1980s" from FM4113: Ecocinema: The Nature of Film.

Other nominees

Grace Card, “Pleasure and Aggression in Filmic Representations of Sexual Identity in Cabaret and Paris is Burning“ from FM4304: Film and Sexual Identities.

Grace Card, “An Examination of Early British Newsreels as a Form of Industrial Governance” from FM4110: Images and Impact.

Alex Mackay, “A comparison of Paradise Now  and Joe Sacco’s Palestine” from FM4106: War and Cinema.

Alice Alfonso Werdine, “Towards Beauty in Revolutionary Cinema” from FM4102: Film and Politics.

Sam Mills, “Of Nazis, Virgins, Whores and Coons: Creativity, Community and Exclusion in Iron Sky” from FM4107: Cinema and Nation.

Grace Shaffer, “A Study on Film Parody’s Relationship to Genre” from FM4114: Film Genres.

Thomas Hollanek, “All The Others Are Called Ali.  Fassbinder’s Fear Eats the Soul as a response to social and political change in West Germany of the 1970s” from FM2001: Modern World Cinema.

Mina Radovic, “Capitalist Ideology in Citizen Kane” from FM1001:Key Concepts in Film Studies.