News

New film studies centre

Recognising and reflecting the increasing demand for film studies courses, the University has recently established a new Centre for Film Studies.

Belinda Waterman and Dr Jeffrey Geiger

Film related courses have been taught at the University since the late 1960s with departments such as Literature, History, and Art History and Theory providing teaching. However in recent years the University has made a concerted effort to establish a permanent and widely recognised film studies programme and this has culminated in the recent development of the new Centre.

The Centre will serve as a central unit for organising the various degrees and film-related activities going on around the University. It will manage existing film degrees as well as spearhead new joint and single honours degrees in film, such as the new French with Film Studies which will be run in collaboration with the Department of Language and Linguistics. It will also sponsor special events, screenings, lectures and informal talks. The Centre is also in the process of putting together a library of DvDs and videos, many of which can be checked out for teaching, research and personal use.

The Centre will be headed by Dr Jeffrey Geiger, who arrived at Essex to work in the Department of Literature in 1997 after completing a PhD at UCLA. A team of supporting staff from across the University will include Belinda Waterman as Secretary to the Centre and immediate contact for students.

Dr Geiger has high hopes for the new Centre and thinks it has the potential to generate a greater awareness of film at the University: 'My hope is that the Centre can get more people interested in the great diversity of films from around the globe. Film is a medium with a very wide appeal, so it is likely that not only students, but the whole University community will benefit from this new Centre.'

To kick off the new academic year the Centre's first special event will be attended by one of Britain's finest directors, Terence Davies. Mr Davies will make a personal appearance at a screening of his latest, award-winning film The House of Mirth, an adaptation of Edith Wharton's classic starring Gillian Anderson and Dan Ackroyd. The screening will take place on 14 November at 7pm, for further details please contact Belinda Waterman, extension 2313.

Essex writing on-line

The work of budding Stephen Kings and Ben Okris across the region is now accessible to people around the globe thanks to a creative writing website created by two students from the Department of Literature.

Extracts: new writing @ essex university is designed as an on-line creative writing journal which allows authors and poets to post their work on the internet. Still in its early stages, the website already displays works by Web Support Manager, and successful author Keith Brooke, as well as English Literature student, Rebecca Kempton.

The site is the brainchild of Kim Laskey and Karen Matthews, two final year literature students. Shortly before the end of their second year Kim and Karen came up with the idea of producing a regularly published magazine in which the work of local writers could be published. However they soon decided that this would be overly complicated and expensive and that an on-line journal would be more accessible, easier to maintain and easier to pass on to other Essex students once they graduated. With support and help from the Department of Literature and the Web Support Unit, the site was designed and constructed over the summer months and has now gone live in time for the start of the new academic year.

The site includes writer biographies, interviews with writers, a diary of writing-related news and events as well as poetry and fiction by local writers. There are also guides on how to contribute work to the site, copyright guidelines, and links to other literary websites.

On being asked about the objectives of the site Karen Matthews said: 'We wanted to give students the opportunity to get their creative writing recognised and published locally and there has been little opportunity for them to do so. We also wanted to provide a place for people to simply enjoy other students' work and get an insight into the lives of working, successful writers through the author interviews.'

The web address of the Extracts website is http://privatewww.essex.ac.uk/~extracts/

Also in the printed November edition of Wyvern:

• Launch of health sciences degrees
• New studentships for financial studies
• New £4m fund helps exploit hi-tech research