The Centre for Film Aesthetics and Cultures (CFAC) organises the ‘World Cinema and the Essay Film Conference’. It is a centre of international excellence in research and teaching of film, both with regard to its medium-specific qualities and its inherent interdisciplinary and intercultural properties. Endowed with an outward-facing ethos, CFAC is a catalyst for expertise in film at the University of Reading.
CFAC understands aesthetics in its broadest sense: as an important branch of philosophy; as style and beauty pertaining to art; as a mode of cultural experience; and as sensory pleasure connecting filmmakers and film spectators. It proposes culture as the locale for human interaction and improvement, and as the necessary background for the analysis of any aesthetic object, most notably film, whose intercultural aspect derives from its own nature as an industrial and transnational medium. CFAC and its members from across the university investigate the ways in which film reflects the aesthetic politics inherent in the specificities of the medium as well as the cultural struggles and gains deriving from film’s interactions with different systems, practices and interests.
CFAC fosters debates and links between the University of Reading and other research centres and film societies , as well as with the industries of production, distribution and exhibition, including international networks of arthouse film theatres and festivals. CFAC hosts a permanent schedule of activities, including: research grant management; national and international networking; conferences and workshops; seminar series; prestige lecture series; MA programmes; PhD and Postdoctoral training; publications and book launches.
CFAC Staff
Director: Prof Lúcia Nagib
Executive Committee: Alison Butler; Dr Charles Ludwig Leavitt; Mr Chris Wagstaff; Dr John Gibbs; Prof Jonathan Bignell; Dr Jonathan Dronsfield; Dr Lisa Purse; Dr Peter Miskell; Dr Rachel Garfield; Prof Susanne Clausen; Dr Igor Krstic; Dr Rebecca Hillman.
Associate Members: Prof Alison Jayne Donnell; Dr Andreas Behnke; Prof Anna McMullan; Dr Christina Hellmich; Prof Catherine Leglu; Dr Cindy Becker; Dr Daniela LaPenna; Dr Faye Woods; Guy Baxter; Dr Julia Waters; Prof Lib Taylor; Dr Madeleine Davies; Dr Neil Cocks; Dr Paola Nasti; Dr Rob Banham; Sara Zadrozny; Dr Simone Knox; Dr Ute Wolfel; Amrit Maghera-Johal.