Our Mission
We are bringing together university lecturers, students and thinkers from film studies and other disciplines to explore the potential of film. Our main goal is to demonstrate what the study of film can actually uncover. Our focus is on the social justice work that cinema does and the questions which cinema can answer for us on the subjects of race, gender & sexuality, homelessness, poverty, education, healthcare, and policing, in addition to ecological justice in sustainability, and ecological consciousness and climate anxiety.
Lauren was appointed Lecturer in Film Studies at York St. John in January 2019, after three years with the university as a Visiting Lecturer in Film and Media studies. Her main area of interest is the Horror film. She completed my PhD in June 2018, and her thesis explored the British ‘Hoodie horror’ film cycle and its treatment of gender and class. Her current research projects concern British Horror TV, the New Zealand horror film, and the politics of portraying female friendship in cinema.
Martin Hall is the Course Leader for the Film Studies and Media & Communication BA programmes and the Film and Screen Studies MA at York ST John University. He is a Senior Fellow of the HEA, the Co-Leader of the ‘Cinema and Social Justice Project’ and the Principal Investigator on a SIGN funded Socio-Economic Injustice Film Curation project. Since completing his PhD in the field of 1960s British and European Art cinema he has published on the works of François Truffaut, Ray Bradbury, Roman Polanski, Tony Richardson, Jean-Paul Rappeneau, Elaine May and Woody Allen. His recent publications have centred on work on Sport Documentaries particularly looking at poetics and mountaineering films.
“The interesting but challenging subject matter of socioeconomic ‘injustice’, homelessness and housing are a contemporary experience but a theme that also reverberates within the archive collections. We look forward to working with you in the future”
Yorkshire Film Archive
Cinema and Social Justice PROJECT 