Dr Richard Smith

Director of Film Studies
BA
MA University of Queensland
PHD University of NSW

Phone: 02 9351 4208
Fax: 02 9351 4212
Location: Room 307, RC Mills Building
Email : r.smith@sydney.edu.au

My principle area of research interest is the temporality and form of the cinematic image, the place of technology and thought in generic and formal change and the range of theories useful for considering these aspects of cinema. Within this principle area of research I engage with structuralist and poststructuralist accounts of meaning and its production, materialist and idealist accounts of cinematic technology, Bergsonian and Deleuzian concepts of time and evolution, phenomenological accounts of cinematic subjectivity. I am also interested in post Cold-War American and Hollywood cinema, particularly action-suspense genres such as the hi-jack, the heist, and the escape. I find these genres useful for thinking about the movements, procedures, and operations of capitalised and urbanised milieux.

Research Interests

• "The Digital Apparatus" is a research project that will test a range of methodologies for thinking through the relation between technology and thought in film production, criticism and theory. It is particularly interested in the idealist-materialist tussle within general theories of film.
• The Go Concept. Richard Smith is co-author of a documentary about sophistication. Seeking AFC O Strand funding of 20,000. Script submitted March 2005. AFC decides on successful applicants in May 2005.

Publications

• [Book]"The Brain is the Milieu: Speed, Politics and the Cosmopolitan Screen. "Theory and Event April 2004.
• [Book] "The Philosopher with Two Brains." Published in Film-Philosophy. Deleuze Special Issue. Vol 5 No 34 November 2001. pp249-270.
• [Review Essay]"Criticism without Myth" Australian Humanities Review Issue 31-32 April 2004.
• [Review Essay] “Film Aesthetics” Inquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy submitted April 1 2005. Commissioned Piece.