Dr. Elena Von Kassel Siambani
Research interests
My main research interests are film history and early 20th century art history.
The way in which poetry and art movements of the 1930s reflected society and the cultural exchanges between France, Britain and America were the underlying themes of my doctorate, which I have developed in various articles. The emphasis of my doctorate was on Humphrey Jennings, a painter who played a central role in importing surrealism to Britain, a founder of the Mass Observation social survey movement in 1937, and director of some of the most celebrated documentaries of the Second World War.
My book Humphrey Jennings, le poète du cinema britannique has just been published by L’Harmattan. It is the first to appear in France on this major avant-garde artist and filmmaker. In November 2007 I was consultant at the Cinémathèque française on a comprehensive retrospective to mark Jennings’ centenary for the ‘mois du documentaire’.
I am interested in the relationships between painting and film, in particular how avant-garde art influenced filmmakers of the 1930s and 1940s. Jean Renoir, Jean Cocteau, Alberto Cavalcanti and Len Lye are some of the filmmakers, apart from Jennings, that I have analysed from this perspective.
My current research project is on transnational history and contemporary foreign filmmakers in France.
Teaching specialities
French and British film history; documentary: cinema verité, direct cinema; early 20th century art history.
I have taught at the University of Paris 10 - Nanterre, the University of Paris 7- Denis Diderot, and more recently at the University of Paris 3 - Sorbonne Nouvelle, and la Fémis.
Publications
Books
Humphrey Jennings, le poète du cinema britannique
Thesis
Poésie et sciences sociales, sources du documentaire anglais des années 1930-1950. L’exemple de Humphrey Jennings, ANRT, Lille, 2003.
Articles / chapters
‘« Anthropology at home » dans Chronique d’un été et We Are the Lambeth Boys’, Colloque International Jean Rouch 2009, « Cinéma direct et construction du réel », Comité du Film Ethnographique, Musée de l’Homme, forthcoming, 19 November 2009.
‘Jean Cocteau et le cinéma’ in Ligeia, Vol. Peintres et cinéma, Patricia-Laure Thivat (ed.), forthcoming, 2009.
‘Re-imagining history: The Silent Village and Went the Day Well ?’, in Cinéma et histoire / History and Cinema, Melvyn Stokes and Gilles Menegaldo (eds.), Michel Houdiard, Paris, March 2008.
‘Jennings cinéaste: du surréalisme au pop art’, Ligeia, Vol. Cinéma et peinture, Patricia-Laure Thivat (ed.), Giovanni Lista, Paris September, 2007.
‘Humphrey Jennings, entre poésie et propagande’ Cinémathèque française, novembre, 2007. http://www.cinematheque.fr/fr/espacecinephile/evenements/humphrey-jennings.html
Interview with Karel Reisz (November 2001), Bref, le magazine du court métrage, November-December 2007.
‘La lettre: innovations cinématographiques à la poste’, Lettres de cinema: de la missive au film-lettre, Editions Presses Universitaires de Rennes (PUR), October 2007.
‘Can a Diary Ever Take the Place of a Novel: The Journals by John Fowles’ in Pre- and Post-Publication of the Contemporary Novel in English, Vanessa Guignery and François Gallix (ed.), Editions Publibook Université, Paris, April 2007.
‘An Image of Britain during the Second World War: The Films of Humphrey Jennings (1939-1942)’, Média, images, propagande, University of Caen, in La Revue LISA/ LISA e-journal, Vol. 4, no.3, 2006.
http://www.unicaen.fr/mrsh/lisa/publications/012/09vonKassel.pdf
Marks of esteem
Prix Simone Genevois for my D.E.A. (Master) thesis proposal on Jennings
Member of the Lindsay Anderson Memorial Foundation (LAMF)
, L’Harmattan, Col. Champs visuels, December 2008
