Lucy Fife Donaldson

Biography

My research focuses on film style, texture, performance and the body. I am interested in bringing together close textual analysis with issues of embodiment, experience and sensation, and drawing on connections to a range of other disciplines, such as dance, philosophy and art. My research interests include the staging and presence of performance in cinema and TV; the relationship between bodily affect, agency and effort; structures of engagement with film, specifically its materiality; genre, especially horror and melodrama; and British Film Criticism (especially in the Movie tradition). I have published on the materiality of performance in post-studio horror and its relationship to elements of film style, on performance and intertextuality in Biopics, the relationship between camera and performer in US cop series The Shield and the contribution of foley artists to the effort and affect of performance. I have also been working on the intertextual echoes embedded in film and television space, in a forthcoming chapter on a series of films directed by Budd Boetticher, and in an article on the British television drama Inspector Morse for my work on the AHRC-funded project ‘Spaces of Television: Production, Site and Style’ as a post-doctoral researcher. In 2014, I published a monograph Texture in Film for Palgrave Macmillan’s series: Palgrave Close Readings in Film & Television (Series Editors: Gibbs, John & Douglas Pye). The book is a strongly interdisciplinary study of the concept of ‘Texture’ in relation to mainstream cinema, and discusses this in relation to its usage in film criticism, narrative, genre and specific decisions around mise-en-scène (lighting, aspect ratio, composition), editing, sound and bodies on-screen. My approach is based in close textual analysis, bringing together discussion of style, criticism and technology. I am a member of the Editorial Board of Movie: A Journal of Film Criticism, and co-edited issue 6 in 2015, which featured a special dossier on ‘moments of texture’ in film and television.

Research Interest

My research focuses on film style, texture, performance and the body. I am interested in bringing together close textual analysis with issues of embodiment, experience and sensation.