Professor Geoffrey Nowell-Smith
Honorary Professorial Fellow
Location: GO Jones 606email: g.s.nowell-smith@qmul.ac.uk
Phone: +44 (0) 20 7882 3068
Professor Geoffrey Nowell-Smith graduated from New College, Oxford with first-class honours in Italian and French in 1962. Between 1964 and 1973 he was a Lecturer in Italian at successively the Universities of Manchester, Sheffield and Sussex. During that time be published a book on the Italian film-maker Luchino Visconti and was co-editor, with Quintin Hoare, of Gramsci’s Prison Notebooks.
In 1974 he crossed over into Film Studies, with temporary appointments at the University of Iowa and Northwestern University (Evanston, Illinois). Back in Britain he became Editor of the journal Screen and then joined the British Film Institute as Head of Education (1978–80) and Head of Publishing (1980–89).
During the 1990s he was Project Director of the Joint European Filmography, a database of European film production funded by the European Community’s Media Programme, and edited the Oxford History of World Cinema (1996). He rejoined the academic world in 1998 as Senior Lecturer in Film Studies at Sheffield Hallam University and was then Professor of Cinema Cultures at the University of Luton from 1999 to 2004. He joined Queen Mary in 2004 as Senior Research Fellow to direct the AHRB-funded History of the British Film Institute.
Research interests:
His main current activity is the AHRC-funded research project into the history of the British Film Institute (BFI) and its relations with government and film culture from its foundation in 1933 to close to the present day. Since the 1950s, the BFI has been at the heart of film culture in Britain, housing the National Film and Television Archive, running the National Film Theatre, distributing films and latterly videos and DVDs, publishing books and the magazine Sight and Sound, and pioneering film and media education at all levels.
Until the takeover by the UK Film Council in 2000 it was also a major producer of experimental and non- or semi-commercial films. Although government funded and (since the 1980s) a Royal Chartered body, it has never seen itself as part of the Establishment and its history has often been turbulent. Perhaps surprisingly, this turbulent and fascinating history has never been systematically researched. This AHRC-funded project aims to fill the gap.
Described by its publishers (though not by its author) as “the definitive guide to the history of cinema worldwide”, The Oxford History of World Cinema (1996) is a comprehensive survey of world cinema in two major senses of the phrase. On the one hand it covers the cinemas of countries all over the world, from India to the USA, from Argentina to Sweden, and from Senegal to Japan; on the other hand it looks at the cinema as a worldwide institution, dominated by multi-national networks with Hollywood in the leading role. (A third possible sense, where “world cinema” means the shelf at the back of the video store housing a few films with sub-titles, is not given house room in the book.)
Apart from the Oxford History, most of his film writing has been about European cinema, especially Italian. He recently brought out a revised and expanded edition (2003) of his Visconti (originally 1967). His latest book, Making Waves: New Cinemas of the 1960s, was published by Contimuum in February 2008. Publication in book form of the history of the British Film Institute is scheduled for autumn 2010. Geoffrey's continuing research, alongside his work on cinema, is on the interplay of racial and religious factors in the portrayal of colonised peoples in the novels and stories of Joseph Conrad and Rudyard Kipling and in the way in which many of the insights of these great writers - especially into political Islam - were lost when their works were adapted for the screen in the 20th century.
Postgraduate supervision:
No current PhD students and not available to undertake further supervision except under exceptional circumstances.
Publications:
Making Waves: New Cinemas of the 1960s (New York and London: Continuum, 2008)
Luchino Visconti (London: British Film Institute, 2003)
Roberto Rossellini: Magician of the Real (co-editor and contributor) (London: British Film Institute, 2000)
Hollywood and Europe: Economics, Culture, National Identity (co-editor and contributor), (London: British Film Institute, 1998)
L’avventura (BFI Film Classics series. London: British Film Institute, 1997)
The Oxford History of World Cinema (Oxford: OUP, 1996)
Co-editor of Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Cultural Writings (London: Lawrence & Wishart, 1985)
Co-editor and translator of Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks (London: Lawrence & Wishart, 1971)