The Centre for Film Aesthetics and Cultures (CFAC) 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.
Latest events
Visiting Filmmaker: Peter Treherne
TUE DEC 6th (Wk11) / 3pm / Bob Kayley Theatre CFAC is building a partnership with the filmmaker Peter Treherne, who has recently secured Arts Council funding for a wonderfully ambitious feature film, Matter of Britain. The project also builds on a collaboration with the Museum of English Rural Life. Treherne will come and talk with us about his project - his inspirations and creative ambitions, and his plans for engaging a village community in the trials and tribulations of film production. All welcome. No booking required. Matter of Britain is a co-creative film that performs the Quest for the Holy Grail with the community of Mayfield, East...Read More >
Skilling Up for Videographic Research
From June 20-24, 2022, CFAC hosted a Videographic Skills workshop. Co-led by Professor John Gibbs and Dr Adam O’Brien, the workshop welcomed colleagues from a range of UoR research divisions. In addition to technical training (in digital editing software), and the opportunity to develop videographic work in response to a series of briefs, the workshop fostered discussion and reflection about this emerging research methodology. The workshop was inspired by the influential model introduced at Middlebury College in 2015. Videographic work has since then become firmly established in Film Studies – but the CFAC workshop was designed to bring on board University…Read More >
An English Literature lecturer experiments with film, philosophy and…sniffing
I recently completed the production of my first film. I started work on it last year following a successful bid to a Centre for Film Aesthetics and Cultures (CFAC) funding call for prospective film makers, in which applications were actively encouraged from those new to the field. As Outreach Lead in the Department of English Literature, I welcomed the opportunity to try and communicate complex ideas to a wider audience through a medium in which I had a long-standing research interest, but no practical experience. I have recently published on the ideas of the controversial Slovenian philosopher and cultural commentator…Read More >
