Third year Film Studies student and investigative journalist Fran Hughes reports from the screening of Lyra (2022) at Coventry Cathedral, about the murdered Northern Irish journalist Lyra McKee. The film was accompanied by a panel chaired by Professor Helen Wheatley (Director of Film and Television Studies) with Lyra's sister Nichola McKee-Corner and brother in law John Corner, the film's producer, Jackie Doyle, the Rev Dr Alex Wimberley (leader of the Corrymeela Community) and Professor Michele Aaron. Fran attended the screening as a recent recipient of the Centre for Investigative Journalism's Lyra McKee Bursary Scheme, and writes about the experience of watching the film and meeting Lyra's family

London Film School (LFS) has been awarded World-Leading Specialist Provider status by the Office for Students in an announcement made today, Thursday 8th December.

The status marks LFS out as being recognised internationally in the filmmaking specialism, providing a level of quality and expertise among the finest in the world. In receiving this accolade, the knowledge and skills of LFS graduates, and the enduring impact they have on the industry, are recognised by leading employers, external funders, other world-leading providers and others in the UK and beyond.

Stephen Gundle, of Film and Television Studies, has received funding of £970,000 from the Arts and Humanities Research Council for a three-year research project on the place of women in the Italian film industry in the decades after World War Two. The project builds on work undertaken by Stephen and Karl Schoonover between 2016 and 2019 on a previous AHRC project about producers and production practices in Italian cinema. The other investigators on the new project – which begins in February 2023 - will be Daniela Treveri Gennari and Silvia Dibeltulo of Oxford Brookes University.

The University of Warwick has been placed 8th in the Guardian University Guide 2023.

The Guardian University Guide is among the UK’s most highly respected university rankings. It takes a variety of factors into consideration including student satisfaction, entry standards, student-staff-ratios, continuation, expenditure per student, teaching quality and career prospects.

26 subjects offered at the University of Warwick were included in the ranking, of which 10 were ranked in the top 5 including: Accounting & Finance, Biomedical Science, Business, Management & Marketing, Drama & Dance, Economics, Education, English, International Relations, Media & Film Studies, and Politics. A further six subjects were in the top 10.

Warwick was the highest ranked institution in the Midlands region. The University was also given special recognition under the category of Media and Film Studies, in which Film and Television Studies was rated as number one in the UK.

The announcement follows shortly after the University was also named one of the UK’s Top 10 universities in The Times and Sunday Times Good University Guide 2023, further cementing its position as one of the UK’s best universities.

Warwick’s success in both the Guardian and The Times rankings is supported by the findings of the recent National Student Survey (NSS), where the University scored 81.4 per cent for overall student satisfaction, placing it third within the Russell Group of universities overall.

Warwick was also rated as first amongst the Russell Group for Student Voice and for Assessment and Feedback, and ranked amongst the top five institutions for Academic Support, Learning Opportunities, Teaching and Organisation and Management.

This result follows from last year’s Research Excellence Framework (REF) 92% which assessed Warwick’s research to be world-leading or internationally excellent.

Professor Stuart Croft, Vice-Chancellor at the University of Warwick, said: “I’m pleased to see Warwick continue to be placed in the top ten of two of the leading university rankings this year. Warwick continues to excel in world class education, have cutting-edge facilities, and a highly motivated and ambitious student community. These elements combine to create an environment to learn, grow, and thrive.

“Our continued successes at Warwick are testament to everyone involved with the University and their dedication, commitment, and passion for delivering an outstanding experience.”

Professor Helen Wheatley, Director of Film and Television Studies at the University of Warwick, said: “We are delighted that Warwick has been ranked first for Media & Film Studies. Film and Television Studies, the first department of its kind in the country, continues to deliver excellent research and teaching thanks to the hard work and dedication of our wonderful staff, and to our students who inspire us to innovate in the classroom and beyond.”

ENDS

Notes to Editors:

Simmie Korotane, Media Relations, Email: Simmie.korotane@warwick.ac.uk

27 Sept 2022

Penny Siopis’s films write histories that are markedly alternative. Combining family home movies, amateur or documentary found footage with sound and a written text presented through subtitles, her films tell untold or censored histories. They speak to (auto)biographical concerns and widely shared experiences of colonialism, war, Apartheid, migration, globalisation, and ecological crisis, all the while standing out as strong aesthetic/affective experiences beyond the historical, and as art objects in dialogue with a number of traditions. Here, I am most interested in producing an understanding of her films as a specific form of post-medium cine-writing. My interest is not purely formal, for the cine-writing in Siopis’s films is not independent of the stories they construct; it is a mode of writing beyond-the-book, born of the task of telling history otherwise. By working through her paragrammatical, scripto-visual style, my discussion will circle in particular around the unspeakable film subject produced by her work.