Catherine Fowler
BA(Hons)(Bulmershe) PhD(Warw)
Senior Lecturer

Office - Richardson 6C13
Tel 64 3 479 8615
Email catherine.fowler@otago.ac.nz

Following her PhD on the films of Chantal Akerman, she lectured from 1994-2004 in Film Studies at Southampton Institute of Higher Education, UK. As well as leading the BA (Hons) in Film Studies and being made a Reader in Research (in 2001) she helped develop and then led the MA in Independent Film and Filmmaking.

Her research interests in Film are divided between historical studies and an engagement with Contemporary World Cinema. Her PhD on Chantal Akerman was an attempt to broaden the critical boundaries within which the director's films had been previously discussed, considering not only her status as a 'woman' and 'independent' filmmaker but also her identities as 'Belgian' and 'Jewish'. Aspects of this thesis have been published in various edited collections, and from it have grown projects around the contradictions of national cinema, independent practice and women filmmakers (see Bibliography for details).

Her recent research and publications have encompassed each of these areas. With Gillian Helfield she is co-editor of the collection: 'Representing the Rural: Space, Place and Identity in Films about the Land'. This book offers a critical introduction to issues raised by the many, varied films that take the land as their setting. The essays here consider the ways in which once the urban space is displaced by the rural, so our understanding of cinema's use of modernity, the national, post-colonialism and the post-modern is transformed.

Her most recent book on British woman film-maker Sally Potter, published 2008, offers the first book length survey of a director who uses song, dance, performance and poetry to expand our experience of cinema beyond the audiovisual.

She was Screen correspondent for the 'Créteil Festival de films de femmes' from 1992 - 1998, (writing an annual review) and she has been part of the editorial advisory committee for the magazine Vertigo ( Vertigomagazine.co.uk ).

Current projects arise from her interest in the film-art axis of influence. This is a long term project on films made for and exhibited in the space of the gallery that explores how these films might challenge theorizations of narrative, time and spectatorship in both film studies and art theory.

Papers taught 2012

MFCO 101 Understanding Film

MFCO 314 Topics in French and Francophone Cinema

MFCO 408 A Topic in Cinema, Gender and Sexuality

Recent conferences

"The re-emergence of cinematic time in the gallery film” FHAANZ conference, Sydney, November 30- Dec 3 (2010).

“Do I add to the images in movies? Pensiveness and the gallery film” SCMS Conference, March 17-21 (2010), Los Angeles.

“Beyond the visible: remaking cinema’s past in the gallery” Invited speaker ‘Cinema in the Digital Age’ Film Programme, Victoria University of Wellington, One Day Symposium, 11 February (2010).

“The Passage Between Images” Screen conference, Glasgow, July 3-5 (2009).

“Introspective and Circumspective Histories of the cinema in the gallery” FHAANZ Conference 2008, November 24-28, University of Otago, Dunedin. “Women Performance on and off screen: the work of Sally Potter and other women artists in the 1970s” British Culture and Society in the 1970s Conference, University of Portsmouth, UK July 1-3 (2008).

‘Re-thinking Film History, re-making cinema in the gallery space’ NECS 2008, Budapest June 18-21 (2008).

Publications

Books

Contemporary Film Directors: Sally Potter Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2008. 152 pages. ISBN 978-0-252-07576-6

Remapping Cinema, Remaking History: Proceedings of the XIVth Biennial Conference of the Film and History Association of Australia and New Zealand, Dunedin: Volume One: Refereed Abstracts (co-editor with Rochelle Simmons) University of Otago, Dunedin, the Department of Media, Film and Communication, 2008. 91 pages. ISBN: 978-0-473-13889-9.

Representing the Rural: Space, Place and Identity in Films About the Land. (co-edited with Gillian Helfield) Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 2006. ISBN 0-8143-3305-2.

European Cinema Reader (Single Edited Book) London and New York: Routledge June 2002. ISBN 0-415-24092-1

Refereed Journal Articles

“Remembering cinema ‘elsewhere’: From Retrospection to Introspection in Gallery Films” Cinema Journal [issue to be assigned; forthcoming 2011]

“Cinema that stays at home: the inexportable films of Belgium’s Gaston Schoukens, Edith Kiel and Jan Vanderheyden” Screen 51: 3, 2010: 256-271.

“Into the Light: Re-reading off-screen and off-frame space in gallery films” New Review of Film and Television Vol. 6, No. 3, December 2008. 253-267.

“Room for Experiment: gallery films and vertical time from Maya Deren to Eija Liisa Ahtila”, Screen Vol 45 Issue 4, January 2005. 324-343

“Sites of Contestation: the place of Alfred Machin in Belgian National Cinema Historical Journal of Radio, Film and Television Vol 21 no 4. October 2001. 347-359.

Chapters in Edited Collections

“Symphonie Paysanne: An Embodied and Embedded Picturing of the Land” In Representing the Rural: Space, Place and Identity in Films about the land (co-edited book) Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 2006:  135-149.

‘Introduction’ (co-written with Gillian Helfield) in Representing the Rural: Space, Place and Identity in Films about the Land (co-edited book) Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 2006: 1-14.

"Spending time with (a) celebrity: Sam Taylor Wood's video portrait of David Beckham" in Su Holmes and Sean Redmond (eds) Framing Celebrity - New directions in celebrity culture London and New York: Routledge, 2006.

"Cinefeminism in its middle ages, or "Please, Please, Please Give me back my Pleasure" : The 1990s films of Sally Potter, Chantal Akerman and Yvonne Rainer"   in Women Filmmakers: Refocusing Jacqueline Levitin, Judith Plessis and Valerie Raoul (eds.) Vancouver Toronto : University of British Columbia Press, 2003, 51-61. ISBN 0-7748-0903-5

' Jeanne Dielman 23 Quai du commerce 1080 Bruxelles' Chapter in 24 Frames: Belgium Wallflower Press, 2003. 1-903364-83-3

"Harnessing Visibility: The Attractions of Chantal Akerman's Golden Eighties " Chapter in Musicals: Hollywood and Beyond Exeter: Intellect, 2000, 107-116. ISBN 1-84150-003-8

"All Night Long : the ambivalent text of 'Belgianicity'" Chapter in Identity and Memory: The Films of Chantal Akerman Edited by Gwendolyn Foster, Flicks books, 1999, pp77-93. ISBN 0 948911 09 3

Reviews

'The twentieth International Festival of Women's Films, Créteil 3-12 April 1998 pp401-404' Screen vol 39 no 4 Winter 1998

'The 19th International Festival of Women's Films, Créteil, 14-23 March 1997' (review, co-written) Screen   vol 38 no 4 Winter 1997 pp393-397

The 18th Créteil International Festival of Women's Films, 22-31 March 1996' (Review, Co-Written). Screen Vol 37 no4 Winter. 1996.

'17th International Festival of Women's Films, Créteil, 1995' Screen vol 36 no 4 Winter 1995 pp427-431

'Performing Sexualities' at Lancaster (Review) NewTheatre Quarterly Vol X no 38 May 1994 pp196-197       

'Créteil International Women's Film Festival, 18-27 March 1994' Screen vol 35 no 4 Winter 1994 pp394-397

"Créteil's 15th International Women's Film Festival, 26 March-4 April 1993' Screen Vol 34 no 3 Autumn 1993 pp289-292

'The 14th Créteil International Women's Film Festival, 10-20 April 1992' (Review, co-written) Screen vol 33 no 4 Winter 1992 pp429-433

Book Reviews

[Forthcoming] ‘Destination London: German-speaking Emigres and British Cinema, 1925-50’ edited by Tim Bergfelder, Oxford: Bergahn Books, 2008. German Quarterly [Issue to be assigned].

‘Popular Cinema in Europe’ Dimitris Elefterotis London: New York: Continuum Press’ (Review) Screen vol 44 no 2 Summer 2003

‘Darke Reading Light’ Review of Light Readings by Chris Darke’ Film- Philosophy vol 6 no 18 July 2002: film-philos.com/vol16 2002/n18fowler

Review of ‘Nothing Happens: Chantal Akerman's Hyperrealist Everyday’ Screen Vol 39, no 1 Spring, 1998.

Entries in edited collections

'Belgian Cinema' Section for the Encyclopedia of Contemporary French Culture Routledge eds 1999 (Approx 1000 words)

Entry on Chantal Akerman The Oxford Guide to Film Studies Eds John Hill and Pamela Church Gibson Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998: 489-491

Entry on 'Chantal Akerman' The Oxford History of World Cinema Ed Geoffrey Nowell-Smith Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996 p755

Main contributor to the 'Belgium' section (8000 words) for the Encyclopedia of European Cinema General Editor, Ginette Vincendeau. London: BFI/Cassell. (1995).

Other Articles

“Phil Collins” essay written for the Catalogue for the Exhibition, “Double Take: the Anna Landa Award 2009”. Art Gallery of New South Wales: May 2009 (1000 words)

‘The Dark, The Light and the Cop: An Interview with Robert Sarkies’ Illusions 39 Winter 2007, 14-17. Re-printed and translated into Polish in Ian Conrich (ed.) Kino Nowej Zelandii Kracow: korporacja ha!art/mff era nowe horyzonty, 2009

‘The Day I will never forget’: An Interview with Kim Longinotto” Women: A Cultural Review Vol 15, no. 1 Spring 2004, 101-107.

'Double Visions, Double Frames' Editorial, Guest editor Filmwaves: Art in-sight Issue 23,   Winter 2004. '

‘The film I will never forget’ interview with documentary maker Kim Longinotto Vertigo Vol 2 no 5 August 2003

‘Doing Time’ Review of Chantal Akerman’s installation ‘Woman Sitting Down After Killing’ presented at the 2001 Venice biennale in Vertigo Vol 3 no1 2003

‘On no longer seeing films by women’ (on the demise of the feminist distributor Cine nova) Vertigo Vol 2 no 2 August 2002