This thesis examines the contemporary practice of the digital audiovisual essay, which is defined as a material form of thinking at the crossroads of academic textual analysis, personal cinephilia, and popular online fandom practices, to suggest that it allows rich epistemological discoveries not only about individual films and viewing experiences, but also about how cinema is perceived in the context of digitally mediated audiovisual culture. Chapter one advances five key defining tensions of the digital audiovisual essay: its object is the investigation of specific films and cinephiliac experiences; it uses a performative research methodology based on the affordances of digital viewing and editing technologies; it exists primarily in Web 2.0 and takes advantage of its collaborative and dialogical modes of production; it is a “rich text object” that continuously tests the different contributions of both verbal and audiovisual forms of communication to the production of knowledge about the cinema; and finally, the digital audiovisual essay has an important pedagogical potential, not only for those who watch it, but especially for those who practice it. Chapter two presents the theoretical framework of the dissertation, challenges the ‘newness’ of the digital audiovisual essay, and suggests that any investigation of this cultural practice must address its ideological implications and its role in the context of contemporary audiovisual culture. Accordingly, it relates the editing and compositional techniques of the digital audiovisual essay with modernist montage and suggests that the audiovisual essay has not only inherited, but has also updated and enhanced the dialectical interdependency between critical and consumerism drives that shaped modernism’s ambiguous relation to mass culture. The final chapter examines four case studies (David Bordwell, Catherine Grant, ::kogonada, and Kevin B. Lee) that showcase the contradictory tensions of this cultural practice and broad our understanding of the politics of the digital audiovisual essay.

What is an ‘arena spectacular’ and why has this genre of live entertainment gained international popularity in the twenty-first century? This study looks at three arena spectaculars: Ben Hur Live, Batman Live and Walking with Dinosaurs Live – all adapted from film or TV productions and performed in London’s O2 Arena between 2007 and 2012. I contextualise the shows with the work of Cirque du Soleil, the Millennium Dome and the city of Las Vegas. However, I argue that the format reached its fullest expression in Britain with the opening ceremony to the London 2012 Olympics, Danny Boyle’s Isles of Wonder. This study proposes that there are specific affective and economic factors within neoliberal and post-cinematic society that make the spatialised, live and ‘unmediated’ performance of a known image or hypertext into an attractive commodity. The arena spectacular should be understood via post-cinematic image-making and the fluidity with which images move from screen, to site and back will be explored here as a commercial process of ‘remediation’. An aggregate of older devices and media that seems to be defined in heterotopic contradistinction to a digital media regime, this format can be explained through contemporaneous qualities of public space, immaterial labour, government and consumption. This analysis is an attempt at grasping the ‘offer’ of these products – through their advertising, merchandise and the shows themselves. What is their affordance; what experiences do they allow and how does this benefit both consumers and producers? Despite their economic and cultural marginality, perhaps these entertainment productions can be seen in some ways as archetypal products of the early twenty-first century.

This thesis argues that cinema is going through a radical transformation. When cameras and screens become digitally networked a circuit is formed, not only between films and their audience, but to a shared reality in time. Crowdsourcing, cloud film and myriad mobile applications are bringing together individual perspectives in ways that render experience as collectively cinematic. This accelerating transition is further reflected in the increasing refinement of interactivity in social networks. Underlying these emergent practices remains the assumption that directing and editing film is fundamental to the experience of cinema. This practice-led thesis reconsiders the control function of film by reframing it as a temporal sense-connection between organic and digital networks. By iteratively replacing authorial film structuration with networked sensitivities, a collective psycho-mechanical quality of cinema is produced. I develop and question this emergent quality as a ‘network-image’ in relation to its creator-audience and ask how future development of the concept may realise wider socio-cinematic transformations. In this way, the thesis contributes a preliminary artefact and foundational theory intended to mobilise a practice and discourse for a network cinema. The thesis is theoretically informed by the philosophical frameworks of Giles Deleuze, and in particular his engagement with time through the lens of cinema. Using these ideas as a foundation, I identify the collective form of cinema as an evolutionary step in media consciousness. An experimental incarnation of this process is embodied in the submitted artefact, Lifemirror, a system that connects cameras to generate and observe film as a shared process in time rather than an authored production of time. As an audience-led incarnation of cinema, the films produced by the system challenge dominant models and reposition narrative as inherent to an environment unfolding through individually mobilised sense and contingency. As such, the research finds a temporally directed perceptual space between organic and digital networks that forms a distinct foundation for a ‘cinema-without-cinema’, a cinema-to-come in between networked movements that prefigures an engagement with co-conscious time.

Nigeria has no developed tradition of screenwriting and films tend to be built on principles and techniques derived from oral heritage. Thus the oral and the performative dominate Nigerian film language. The core research problems and questions of this project revolve around how screenwriting practices can be evolved, given the strong influence of oral traditions. The key aim of my practice led research is to improve the quality of Nigerian films by building on and transcending the oral traditions, through developing a more visual and cinematic approach to screenwriting in Nigeria. The research asks: how can the Nigerian Screenwriter evolve an understanding of the concept of screenwriting that is akin to that of other advanced cinema cultures, while maintaining their cultural heritage? In order to achieve my aim of developing a more cinematic approach to screenwriting in Nigeria, the first stage in my research involved looking at, and contextualising three case studies, namely, Thunderbolt (Nigeria, 2001), written by Adebayo Faleti and Femi Kayode, and directed by Tunde Kelani, Chinatown (U.S.A. 1974), written by Robert Towne and directed by Roman Polanski, and L’argent (France, 1983), written and directed by Robert Bresson. I was able to explore the role of the screenplay in shaping cinematic language and the relationship between screenwriting and directing. I also looked briefly at the context of oral storytelling, conducting interviews with prominent Nigerian Academics. Following the case studies, I identified a number of cinematic ingredients, such as how dialogue, mise en scene and visual images were engaged in conveying the key moments of the films, telling the stories and conveying meaning and values to the viewer. These cinematic ingredients also guided me in designing creative practice experiments, including a detailed process of cinematically interpreting a traditional oral story which involved making a documentary on how such stories are told traditionally, writing short screenplays, adapting the same story and making short films, also exploring ways of telling the same story. As part of my methodology, I employed the reflexive practice approach, by reflecting on each experiment and using the interim findings to shape my next experiments. This process resulted in a number of rewrites and drafts of my short screenplays. The results of the findings from my experiments and series of reflections are explored further and disseminated through my final output, a feature screenplay supported by a critical evaluation.

This thesis explores a little known period of early film exhibition in late Victorian Britain. Employing an historiographic approach to material not previously researched, principally the archive of William D. Slade a successful Cheltenham business man, a largely chronological study of Slade‟s activities has been undertaken. Beginning with his presentations of optical lantern exhibitions in the 1880s and 90s in Cheltenham and Worcester, Slade‟s experience as an amateur in magic lantern exhibition is explored as the background to the paradigm shift he made in December 1896. Immediately after purchasing a Demenÿ -Chronophotographe and films from the recently established Gaumont Company in Paris, Slade, accompanied by his daughter Mary, embarked on a new career as Slade‟s Kinematographical and Optical Entertainments and Concerts. During the first six months of 1897, he put on a series of entertainments in the south-west of England and Derbyshire. Investigating what was taking place in Cheltenham in 1897 revealed that the Borough Council commissioned Robert Paul to take film of the official visit of the Prince of Wales to the town in May 1897. The correspondence between Slade and Gaumont et Cie further disclosed that Léon Gaumont, in company with John Le Couteur of the Photographic Association in London, also came to Cheltenham to film this visit. This explained how Slade was able to exhibit film of the Prince of Wales‟ visit as part of the Cheltenham Diamond Jubilee celebrations in June 1897. Slade subsequently made these films a central feature of his nationwide touring entertainments. In August 1897, Slade entered into a contract with a theatrical agent, Edward Baring, which led to 28 weeks of touring as Slade‟s Electro-Photo Marvel six nights a week throughout England and Scotland, ending in March 1898. An in-depth study of the many exhibitions he presented revealed the wide variety of localities he visited, and furnished new understanding of the importance of the Diamond Jubilee films in attracting a diverse audience in many thriving towns of this period. William Slade, previously unknown, emerges as a significant figure in the diffusion of moving pictures beyond the cities and the music hall, into many different localities of provincial Britain and significantly extends the knowledge of exhibition practices in the two years immediately after the first exhibitions in London.

American author and journalist Jonah Lehrer declared in 2012 that Pixar Animation Studios was ‘the one exception’ to the oft-cited maxim that, in Hollywood, ‘nobody knows anything.’ Patrick Goldstein of the Los Angeles Times spoke in similar terms in 2008, writing that, ‘critics and audiences are in agreement on one key thing: Nobody makes better movies than Pixar.’ Thirteen consecutive global box office successes and scores of industry awards would seem to suggest that Lehrer and Goldstein are correct. Yet it is important to recognise that such statements invariably refer to something intangible, something beyond a particular Pixar film or selection of films. There exists, in other words, a widely held set of meanings and associations about what the studio represents, and to whom. This thesis argues that this set of meanings and associations – Pixar’s brand identity – is far from the fixed and unambiguous entity it is often seen to be. If the studio has come to be seen as guarantee of quality family entertainment, when did this notion become widespread? Have the parameters for ‘quality’ and ‘success’ remained constant throughout its history? I demonstrate for instance that Pixar benefited considerably from Disney’s wavering reputation from the late-1990s onwards. I approach branding as a discursive process, and one that brand producers sometimes have little control over, contrary to the implicit claims of most marketing literature. Broadly chronological in structure, the thesis traces the development of the studio’s reputation by drawing on Barbara Klinger’s approach to historical reception studies. Individual chapters focus on how Pixar was discussed by critics and journalists at specific moments or in specific contexts, as it evolved from a computer graphics company to become the most celebrated film studio of all time. Ultimately, this is a case study of the cultural work involved in the making of a brand or an auteur, and how these meanings can shift over time.

The thesis explores the cormection between the imaginative engagement with narrative fiction films, and the imagination as it is employed in moral reasoning. I begin by describing a variety of imaginative and non-imaginative stances towards fiction in terms of a general internal/external schema. I then describe a similar schema as it applies to engaging with fictional characters - imagining from a subjective and an objective perspective. I argue that in both cases - internal/external, and subjective/objective - an either/or choice between them should be rejected in favour of an account that incorporates both perspectives. The second part of the thesis begins with an account of how the internal! external distinction is related to the question of how, or if, narrative fiction films can be sources of moral knowledge. I consider the idea that films can act as 'thoughtexperimen( S' (the ITE thesis) and find it lacking. I argue, however, that the idea should not be rejected but modified. I do so with reference to Bernard Williams' distinction benveen 'thick' and 'thin' ethical concepts, and I show that re-conceiving fihns as examples of thick ethical concepts meetS the objections that I have levelled at the FTE thesis. It also, I claim, satisfies the condition that if films are to have moral-cognitive value, that value must be tied in a substantial way to their aesthetic properties. I then go on to discuss in chapter four what might seem the most natural ethical function of engaging with fictions - coming to know 'what it's like'. Subjective imagining, or empathising, I argue is not intrinsically beneficial, but becomes so when it is conducted within a more objective context. The final two chapters are a more detailed discussion of Eric Rohmer's series of films Les ConUs ,ilJoreaux/The Moral Tales in which I flesh out some of the theoretical claims of the thesis, and connect them to a tradition of ironic realism exemplified by Rohmer's senes.

Belonging to the field of British cinema history, this revisionist thesis examines the portrayal of the family in feature film, 1940-1949. Using a sample of popular films as extended case studies, the method of analysis is qualitative, identifying recurring narrative themes and patterns across a range of film genres. It investigates what familial forms were depicted in popular British feature films; how family representations operated within (patriotic) film narratives; whether the family was presented as an ideal; whether contradictions existed in the representation of the family; and to what extent film portrayals of the family articulated or related to wider public concerns about the family in general, and about the role of the mother in particular. In addition, this thesis also scrutinises how the idea of the family was an important construct for rendering non-familial structures comprehensible according to commonly held cultural understandings. Overall, it arrives at four main findings: that popular British cinema, 1940-1949, was characterised by diversity; families in some shape or form were a pervasive element of British cinema during the 1940s; familial representations were characterised by a multi-dimensional morality; and that women (especially in their roles as mothers and wives) were frequently figured as a 'problem' or 'threat' to the family and family life, fathers were presented as less central to family life, and children were usually portrayed as innocents.

Repeat Frame: How to Do Things with Film (2012-14) examines the medium of analogue film and its apparatus: the camera and the projector. The artworks in How to Do Things with Film are an interrogation of analogue film and its performativity. Existing as a part of experimental filmmaking of the twentieth century, they reevaluate the core components of this practice. The methods in which the film apparatus are used in the production and exhibition of the films create an ongoing looped performance of action, which has no beginning, middle or end. The methods I apply that define the operation of the apparatus, impact on how each film behaves when installed in space and so the artworks have various stages of affect in the event of their performance as film installations. My research resulted in four interrelated films presented as an exhibition, foregrounding how the apparatus of analogue film and their respective limitations are integral in the process of production and presentation. The films essentially activate space by performing, which is explored on several different levels through material and mechanical considerations. The performativity of the medium, invoked in these works draws on experimental filmmaking practices including Hollis Frampton’s analogy of the film-strip as performed by the projector. Using experimental film techniques such as repetition, looping and specific use of the camera frame, the medium of film is emphasised. The use of repetition as witnessed in the four films draws attention to the projection frame through the action performed within it, which in turn highlights the out-of-frame. The use of repetition as a generative tool leaves a residual image and memory image in the already known and in the expectation of what is yet to come, therefore contributing to the illusion of a continuum of in-frame and out-of-frame action. The suggested continuum of action creates a tension around the film image, in shifting the experience of duration as a pattern or patterns witnessed in-frame and experienced out-of-frame as a between frames. It is in this space of the between-frames, that I consider as the site of affect in the films, coming about through what I term the performative apparatus. This written analysis, in addition to and accompanying the artwork, emphasizes the technological devices as central to the creation of film. The machinery of film is also central to the writing as I describe the methodological role of each apparatus and how together I consider their functioning as a whole as the performative apparatus. The title of this thesis alludes to the notion of the performativity of film, through referring to J.L Austin’s lecture series How to Do Things with Words, addressing how language performs through what it does. Here the visual language of film material is examined through what it does by performing. The practical processes used in researching Repeat Frame: How to Do Things with Film, determine not only how these works were made, but also how they are installed and subsequently how they generate affect to demonstrate and open up the experience of duration as a series of shifting patterns of ‘how longs’ which are in flux.

The female nurse’s image has been associated historically with a range of diverse and often contradictory values in popular imagery. Evidence of this is amplified in film. This thesis examines the representation of nurses in a corpus of over 250 feature films, from silent to contemporary cinema. Its foundational question is interrogating why these professional women have come to embody such varied and contrasting modes of femininity, to such an extent that they have become a particularly rich case study for the study of female stereotypes – and, accordingly, for the representation of gender, class and race issues. Building on existing scholarly work on the topic – especially that of Beatrice and Philip Kalisch, Julia Hallam and David Stanley – my study concentrates on (North) American, British and Italian cinemas, and focuses on the cinematic genres which have offered the most prolific depictions of nurses: biopics, melodrama, the thriller and comedy – and on how the prevalence of these genres has changed over time. Film Studies and Nursing mark its interdisciplinary nature; feminist film theory informs the textual analysis, and cultural and gender studies underpin areas in my comparative analysis. Besides expanding knowledge and the corpus of studies on its specific subject, the thesis makes a contribution to the medical humanities. The crosscultural character of my research adds the Italian context, and expands the current scholarly debate on the representation of nurses to the influence that different national contexts have exerted on the depiction of these professional women as characters in feature films.