Wake Forest Magazine, September 2004 - Past Issues - Wake ...

P R O F I L E
paper Screen International, and
provides expert commentary on
the DVD of Antonioni’s trend-setting
sixties classic Blow Up.
Yet for all his art-house credentials,
Brunette doesn’t disdain the
cinema of the mall. He acknowledges
the overwhelming global
box-office and cultural power of
contemporary Hollywood movies
and respects the enjoyment their
audiences derive from them. As
Leading man
| Peter Brunette brings star quality to his role as director of the film studies minor.
ilm scholarship and criticism
has a cast of thousands, but relatively
few leading men. Peter
Brunette is one of those who projects
star quality for the serious
cinephile.
Among Brunette’s books are
definitive studies of directors
Roberto Rossellini, Michelangelo
Antonioni, François Truffaut, and
Wong Kar-Wai, along with an edited
volume of interviews with
Martin Scorsese. The more than
seventy luminaries he has interviewed
for the New York Times
and other influential periodicals
include David Mamet, Krzysztof
Kieslowski, Kevin Smith, Nikita
Mikhalkov, Catherine Deneuve,
Baz Luhrmann, Gary Oldman,
Janet Leigh, Cate Blanchett, Bruce
Beresford, Terence Stamp, Stanley
Tucci, Atom Egoyan, Tom Stoppard,
Agnieska Holland, and Vittorio
Taviani. He regularly attends the
major film festivals in Cannes,
Toronto, and Berlin, is
chief film critic at
indieWIRE.com and a
frequent reviewer for
the British trade
director of Wake Forest’s new film
studies program, he intends to balance
appreciation of foreign and
classic American cinema with
more perceptive critical perspectives
on today’s youth-oriented
popular movies.
After nearly thirty years of
teaching film studies and critical
theory at George Mason University
in Virginia, Brunette joined Wake
Forest’s faculty in July as Reynolds
Professor of Film Studies. Besides
teaching courses in film theory
and history and visual culture, he
will guide the interdisciplinary
film studies minor, develop film
series, invite film professionals
and critics to campus, and generally
cultivate appreciation and
enthusiasm for cinema among the
faculty and student body.
David Lubin, Charlotte C. Weber
Professor of Art who chaired the
search, said the committee was
looking for a senior academician
who was equally
devoted to teaching
and scholarship.
“The first time I
spoke with Peter,
he was in Paris with a group of
students, and would be going from
there to Bangkok to attend an
international film festival,” says
Lubin, a respected scholar and critic
of the visual arts, including film.
“That suggested right there that he
was passionate about students as
well as having stellar critical credentials
and connections in the
international film community. We
discovered that he was equally gifted
at popular writing for general
audiences and specialized writing
for scholarly audiences. And his
freshness, informality, and wonderful
interpersonal skills gave the
impression of an overall good guy
who would fit in well at Wake Forest.”
Although he is an authority in
the postwar Italian Neorealism
movement and the post-structuralist
approach to visual theory and
criticism, Brunette is an eclectic
scholar and critic, with catholic
tastes and a thorough knowledge
of cinematic genres ranging from
French New Wave to contemporary
Asian. In his physical location,
however, he has been decidedly
focused. After finishing his
doctorate in English with a minor in
film at the University of Wisconsin
in 1975, he landed at George Mason
and stayed put, the last sixteen
years with the title of Professor
of English, Cultural Studies and
Film Studies.
Why pull up roots now, at age
sixty and after twenty-nine years
in one place
34 WAKE FOREST MAGAZINE