<strong>University</strong> <strong>of</strong> <strong>Kent</strong> / ARTS STUDIO FILM www.kent.ac.uk/arts/film BAFTA Badlands Documentary Cowboy 1913 Fantômas Nuremberg Fiction Flashback Soap Gladiator Filmmaker Performance Cinema Festival Noir 4
STAFF PROFILE <strong>University</strong> <strong>of</strong> <strong>Kent</strong> / ARTS STUDIO PETER STANFIELD Director <strong>of</strong> Film Studies, Dr Peter Stanfield is the author <strong>of</strong> books on Hollywood westerns, the American gangster film and jazz and blues in American film. His latest book, Maximum Movies Pulp Fictions will be published in the summer. He spoke to us about his early film education and the dialogue between high and low art. Did you always want to study film? I left school at 16 and started an engineering apprenticeship, but soon realised that it wasn’t for me. I went to New York; I had never been before but felt I had because I knew it so well from all the movies I had seen – Taxi Driver, Mean Streets, Shaft. Travelling made me realise that the world was bigger and more mysterious and marvellous than I could ever imagine if I stayed in a factory in Hemel Hempstead. So, when I returned to the UK I took an American Studies degree. At the time, I lived near King’s Cross and frequented a cinema called the Scala, it was one <strong>of</strong> the last great repertory cinemas, and gave me my first film education. It screened a wonderful mix <strong>of</strong> European avant garde and American cinema; I completely fell in love with Robert Mitchum in Night <strong>of</strong> the Hunter and Out <strong>of</strong> the Past. I signed up for the first taught MA in Film Studies at the <strong>University</strong> <strong>of</strong> East Anglia where I was taught by many leading figures including Charles Barr and Thomas Elsaesser. It was an extraordinary time to be studying film, and I loved every minute <strong>of</strong> it. What is the equivalent <strong>of</strong> westerns for today’s students? Teaching students today I don’t get the sense <strong>of</strong> that kind <strong>of</strong> homogeneous culture. Science fiction and horror are the most popular genres, but they tend to attract ardent cult fans; there is not a sense that we all consume and share knowledge about these genres. What do you enjoy about teaching? Students are very visually literate and working with them gives you a new take on contemporary films. You find yourself watching films you might not otherwise come across and, as someone who is always looking for something surprising in film, this can be inspiring. Does your research inform your teaching? Of course, and vice versa. I teach a module called Pulp Film: Popular Cinema and the Avant Garde where I ask students to think about the dialogue between low and high art. We look at what happens when avant garde ideas meet popular movies – film noir is the perfect example where the veneer <strong>of</strong> Parisian sophistication is given to what are actually a bunch <strong>of</strong> low-budget crime movies. Reevaluated by a group <strong>of</strong> French cinephiles in the 50s, many <strong>of</strong> these films have now become part <strong>of</strong> the film studies’ canon. In talking and thinking about this with the students, the classes became a series <strong>of</strong> research in practice seminars, where I was able to test my ideas, and through this we discovered new things about the films, their relationships with each other and across genres and time. That process has informed my research and has led to the publication <strong>of</strong> a book, Maximum Movies Pulp Fictions, which is based solely on my work at <strong>Kent</strong>. Is there one area <strong>of</strong> film studies that particularly interests you? My first great love in film was the western and my PhD focused on westerns from the 1930s culminating with John Ford’s Stagecoach, (most studies start with Stagecoach but mine ends with it). This research was the basis for my first book, Hollywood, Westerns and the 1930s: The Lost Trail. I don’t teach westerns now; the death <strong>of</strong> the western is not so much on the screen as in the cultural memories <strong>of</strong> the students, they just don’t watch cowboy movies. When I was growing up, our culture was saturated with it, I grew up with the Milky Bar Kid and played with cowboy toys. The Assassination <strong>of</strong> Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford RECOMMENDATIONS Film to see before you come to <strong>Kent</strong> The Assassination <strong>of</strong> Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford (2007) Practitioner whose work you admire I always seek out a soundtrack by Nick Cave or a film by Jim Jarmusch or Aki Kaurismäki Film Festival you would like to convene I would call it Paris/New York and it would feature American films set in Paris and French films set in New York 5
Change language