Staff Profiles

Film Theory; Independent American Cinema; Documentary Film; Dissertation Supervision (BA and MA); Research Methods (MA); Digital Humanities.

Supervision

MA Dissertations on film theory, Hollywood cinema, digital humanities, film style

Supervised PhD theses on on Film Style, Film-Philosophy, Puzzle Films, Hollywood Cinema. 

Warren Buckland's areas of Research: (1) film theory; (2) narratology; (3) contemporary cinema (Hollywood blockbusters; puzzle films; new sincerity). Also concerned with: (4) digital humanities; (5) pedagogical research; (6) independent American cinema.

Research group membership

Film Studies Research Unit

Research grants and awards

Senior Research Fellow in Cinepoetics, Freie Universität Berlin (Autumn semester 2016)

Research projects

Currently editing a series of interviews with Christian Metz (Amsterdam University Press, 2017), and is writing a monograph on Wes Anderson (Bloomsbury, 2018).

Further information

www.warrenbuckland.com

Books

• Buckland W, Wes Anderson's Symbolic Storyworld: A Semiotic Analysis, Bloomsbury Academic (2018)
  ISBN: 9781501316524 eISBN: 9781501316555
  Abstract

  Wes Anderson’s Symbolic Storyworld presents a theoretical investigation of what makes the films of Wes Anderson distinctive. Chapter by chapter, it relentlessly pulls apart each of Anderson’s narratives to pursue the proposition that they all share the same deep underlying symbolic values – a common symbolic storyworld. Taking the polemical strategy of outlining and employing Claude Lévi-Strauss’s distinguished (and notorious) work on myth and kinship to analyze eight of Anderson’s films, Warren Buckland unearths the peculiar symbolic structure of each film, plus the circuits of exchange, tangible and intangible gift giving, and unusual kinship systems that govern the lives of Anderson’s characters. He also provides an analysis of Wes Anderson’s visual and aural style, identifying several distinctive traits of Anderson’s mise en scène.--Provided by publisher.
  

  Website 
• Buckland W, Ed., Conversations with Christian Metz, Amsterdam University Press (2017)
  ISBN: 9789089648259
  Website 
• Buckland W, Ed., Hollywood Puzzle Films, Routledge (2014)
  ISBN: 9780415622455
  Abstract From Inception to The Lake House, moviegoers are increasingly flocking to narratologically complex puzzle films. These puzzle movies borrow techniques-like fragmented spatio-temporal reality, time loops, unstable characters with split identities or unreliable narrators-more commonly attributed to art cinema and independent films. The essays in Hollywood Puzzle Films examine the appropriation of puzzle film techniques by contemporary Hollywood dramas and blockbusters through questions of narrative, time, and altered realities. Analyzing movies like Source Code, The Butterfly Effect, Donnie Darko, Déjà Vu, and adaptations of Philip K. Dick, contributors explore the implications of Hollywood's new movie mind games.Website 
• Branigan E, Buckland W, Ed., The Routledge Encyclopedia of Film Theory, Routledge (2013)
  ISBN: 9780415781800 eISBN: 9780203129227
  Abstract

  The Routledge Encyclopedia of Film Theory is an international reference work representing the essential ideas and concepts at the centre of film theory from the beginning of the twentieth century, to the beginning of the twenty-first. 

  When first encountering film theory, students are often confronted with a dense, interlocking set of texts full of arcane terminology, inexact formulations, sliding definitions, and abstract generalities. The Routledge Encyclopedia of Film Theory challenges these first impressions by aiming to make film theory accessible and open to new readers. 

  Edward Branigan and Warren Buckland have commissioned over 50 scholars from around the globe to address the difficult formulations and propositions in each theory by reducing these difficult formulations to straightforward propositions. 

  The result is a highly accessible volume that clearly defines, and analyzes step by step, many of the fundamental concepts in film theory, ranging from familiar concepts such as ‘Apparatus’, ‘Gaze’, ‘Genre’, and ‘Identification’, to less well-known and understood, but equally important concepts, such as Alain Badiou’s ‘Inaesthetics’, Gilles Deleuze’s ‘Time-Image’, and Jean-Luc Nancy’s ‘Evidence’.

  The Routledge Encyclopedia of Film Theory is an ideal reference book for undergraduates of film studies, as well as graduate students new to the discipline. -- Provided by publisher.
  

  Website 
• Buckland W, Film Theory: Rational Reconstructions, Routledge (2012)
  ISBN: 9780415590983
  Abstract In Film Theory: Rational Reconstructions, Warren Buckland asks a series of questions about how film theory gets written in the first place: How does it select its objects of study and its methods of inquiry? How does it make discoveries and explain filmic phenomena? And, How does it formulate and solve theoretical problems? He asks these questions of film theory through a rational reconstruction and a classical commentary. Both frameworks clarify and reformulate vague and inexact expressions, redefine obscure concepts, and examine the underlying logic of film theory arguments. This not only subjects film theory to rigorous examination; it also teaches students how to write theory, by enabling them to question and critically interrogate the logic of previous film theory arguments. The book consists of nine chapters: Introduction, 1: An Improbable Alliance, 2: Visual Stylometry, 3: Between Shakespeare and Sirk, 4: From Iconicity to Semiotic Articulation, 5: Film as a Specific Signifying Practice, 6: Against theories of Reflection, 7: Early Cinema Spectatorship, 8: Another Lacan, 9: The Death of the Camera, Conclusion:Teaching Theory
• Buckland W, Film Theory: Rational Reconstructions, Routledge (2012)
  ISBN: 9780415590983
  Abstract In Film Theory: Rational Reconstructions, Warren Buckland asks a series of questions about how film theory gets written in the first place:
   
  How does it select its objects of study and its methods of inquiry?
  How does it make discoveries and explain filmic phenomena? And,
  How does it formulate and solve theoretical problems?
  He asks these questions of film theory through a rational reconstruction and a classical commentary. Both frameworks clarify and reformulate vague and inexact expressions, redefine obscure concepts, and examine the underlying logic of film theory arguments. This not only subjects film theory to rigorous examination; it also teaches students how to write theory, by enabling them to question and critically interrogate the logic of previous film theory arguments.
   
  The book consists of nine chapters that closely examine a series of canonical film books and essays in great detail, by Peter Wollen, Laura Mulvey, Thomas Elsaesser, Stephen Heath, and Slavoj Žižek, among others.
   
  Website 
• Buckland W, Ed., Film theory and contemporary hollywood movies, Routledge (2009)
  ISBN: 9780415962629
  Abstract Film theory no longer gets top billing or plays a starring role in film studies today, as critics proclaim that theory is dead and we are living in a post-theory moment. While theory may be out of the limelight, it remains an essential key to understanding the full complexity of cinema, one that should not be so easily discounted or discarded. In this volume, contributors explore recent popular movies through the lens of film theory, beginning with industrial-economic analysis before moving into a predominately aesthetic and interpretive framework. The Hollywood films discussed cover a wide range from 300 to Fifty First Dates, from Brokeback Mountain to Lord of the Rings, from Spider-Man 3 to Fahrenheit 9/11, from Saw to Raiders of the Lost Ark, and much more. Individual essays consider such topics as the rules that govern new blockbuster franchises, the 'posthumanist realism' of digital cinema, video game adaptations, increasingly restricted stylistic norms, the spatial stories of social networks like YouTube, the mainstreaming of queer culture, and the cognitive paradox behind enjoyable viewing of traumatic events onscreen. With its cast of international film scholars, Film Theory and Contemporary Hollywood Movies demonstrates the remarkable contributions theory can offer to film studies and moviegoers alike.Website 
• Buckland W, Puzzle Films: Complex Storytelling in Contemporary Cinema, Wiley-Blackwell (2009)
  ISBN: 9781405168618
  Abstract Unites American 'independent' cinema, the European and International Art film, and certain modes of avant-garde filmmaking on the basis of their shared storytelling complexity. Drawing upon the expertise of film scholars from around the world, Puzzle Films investigates a number of films that sport complex storytelling--from Memento, Old Boy, and Run Lola Run, to the Infernal Affairs trilogy and In the Mood for Love.

Journal articles

• Buckland W, 'The Logic of the Cinematic in Portrait of a Lady on Fire'
  Quarterly Review of Film and Video x (2021)
  ISSN: 1050-9208 eISSN: 1543-5326
  Abstract

  The following analysis of Céline Sciamma’s film Portrait of a Lady on Fire (2019) begins by enlisting Jean-Pierre Oudart’s notorious and controversial essay on suture in order to accentuate the nuances of the film’s specific cinematic logic. However, except for the final section, this analysis minimizes Oudart’s psychoanalytic concepts and instead emphasizes his theory’s materialist dimension, which draws principally from the work of Noël Burch. Burch’s work is invaluable for defining the specific form of film in terms of spatio-temporal
  articulation (camera placement, shot scale, duration of the single shot, editing, the dialectic between on-screen and off-screen space and sound), and the representation of character subjectivity (flashbacks, voiceover, the camera’s representation of a character’s awareness and optical experience of the film’s diegesis). In the final section, Kaja Silverman’s reinterpretation of suture theory and Sandy Flitterman-Lewis’s analysis of cinematic enunciation are enlisted to investigate the relation between cinematic logic, the female gaze, and the enunciator in Portrait of a Lady on Fire.
  

  Website 
• Buckland W, '"Mind our mouths and beware our talk": Stylometric analysis of character dialogue in The Darjeeling Limited'
  Journal of Screenwriting 10 (2) (2019) pp.131-147
  ISSN: 1759-7137 eISSN: 1759-7145
  Abstract

  Stylometry uses statistical reasoning to quantify the linguistic attributes of written texts. In this article I draw upon current developments in computer-based stylometric studies to quantify the language of screenplays. I take as my starting point J. F. Burrows’s seminal stylometric study of dialogue in Jane Austen’s novels (Computation into Criticism [Burrows 1987]) to identify and quantify the linguistic habits of major screenplay characters, habits that constitute their distinctive voice. Analysis of the dialogue of the three Whitman brothers in The Darjeeling Limited (screenplay by Wes Anderson, Roman Coppola and Jason Schwartzman, dated 22 November 2006) will serve as a preliminary case study. I aim to use the work of Burrows as the starting point in establishing a new research programme within screenplay studies, one based on the stylometric analysis of the language of screenplays.

  Website 
• Buckland W, 'La Politique des Auteurs in British Film Studies: Traditional versus Structural Approaches'
  Mise au Point : Cahiers de l'Association Française des Enseignants et Chercheurs en Cinéma et Audiovisuel 8 (2016)
  ISSN: 2261-9623 eISSN: 2261-9623
  Abstract This essay charts the emergence of auteur structuralism in Britain from 1967-76 and the polemical debates that erupted between its adherents (Jim Kitses, Peter Wollen, Alan Lovell) on the one hand, and Robin Wood, a defender of traditional auteur theory, on the other. The essay considers the epistemological values behind the debate, and ends by outlining the incompatible types of knowledge and evidence each side in the debate held.Website 
• Buckland W, 'The Film Critic Between Theory and Practice (Or: what every film critic needs to know)'
  Film Criticism 40 (1) (2016)
  ISSN: 0163-5069
  Website 
• Buckland W, 'Visual Rhetoric in Michel Gondry’s Music Videos: Antithesis and Similarity in Beck’s Deadweight'
  Empedocles: European Journal for the Philosophy of Communication 5 (1-2) (2015) pp.49-57(9)
  ISSN: 1757-1952 eISSN: 1757-1960
  Abstract This article analyses the visual rhetoric of Michel Gondry’s Deadweight (1997), a music video for Beck Hansen’s song of the same name, and also considers the song’s relation to Danny Boyle’s film A Life Less Ordinary (1997). Two key structures are identified in the video: antithesis and similarity – which Gondry employs to visually illustrate the title of both Beck’s song and Boyle’s film.Website 
• Buckland W, 'Symptomatic reading in Althusser, Cahiers du cinéma, and Zizek'
  Jump Cut 55 (Fall 2013) (2013)
  ISSN: 0146-5546
  Abstract The following notes take Cahiers du cinéma’s reading of John Ford’s Young Mr. Lincoln (1939) as an exemplary instance of symptomatic reading in the humanities (1986; first published in 1970). A symptomatic reading analyzes a text according to what it does not – indeed cannot – say. I begin by moving backwards to Louis Althusser, the French Marxist philosopher renowned for his re-reading of Marx’s work, including a symptomatic reading of his monumental book Capital (Althusser and Balibar, Reading Capital [1970]). I then move forward to Slovenian philosopher Slavoj Zizek, in particular his radical reformulation of symptomatic reading – via complex psychoanalytic concepts of fantasy and the unknowable Real, as formulated by Jacques Lacan (Zizek, The Sublime Object of Ideology [1989]). I conclude with a few comments recontextualizing the Cahiers reading of Young Mr. Lincoln via Zizek’s reformulation of symptomatic reading. One consequence of this reformulation is to reverse the meaning of the Cahiers reading of Young Mr. Lincoln. These notes simply aim to establish points of contact, overlap, and conflict among Althusser, Cahiers du cinéma, and Zizek, rather than explore each in depth.Website 
• Buckland W, 'Bodies in Filmic Space: The Mise en Scène of ‘Courtship Readiness’ in The Big Sleep'
  Senses of Cinema March 2013 (66) (2013)
  ISSN: 1443-4059
  Website 
• Buckland W, 'Wes Anderson: a ‘smart’ director of the new sincerity?'
  New Review of Film and Television Studies 10 (1) (2012) pp.1-5
  ISSN: 1740-0309
  Abstract EditorialWebsite 
• Buckland W, 'Solipsistic Film Criticism. Review of The Language and Style of Film Criticism'
  New Review of Film and Television Studies 10 (2) (2012) pp.288-298
  ISSN: 1740-0309
  Abstract This review of The Language and Style of Film Criticism (Klevan and Clayton) considers the presuppositions of romantic film-philosophy, its influence on film criticism, and its tendency towards solipsism. This review also presents a theoretical framework for analysing descriptive passages in film criticism.Website 
• Buckland W, 'Film as a specific signifying practice: a rational reconstruction of Stephen Heath's 'On screen, in frame: Film and ideology''
  Semiotica 187 (41000) (2011) pp.49-81
  ISSN: 0037-1998
  Abstract This essay presents a commentary on and rational reconstruction of Stephen Heath's influential and groundbreaking essay from 1976: -œOn screen, in frame: Film and ideology.- As a commentary, it attempts to make explicit the implicit assumptions behind Heath's dense and challenging essay; rewrite and clarify his inexact formulations; and develop a microanalysis of the essay's language. As a rational reconstruction, this essay follows Rudolf Botha's philosophical study into the conduct of inquiry to analyze Heath's formulation of conceptual and empirical problems and the strategies he uses to deproblematize them. This rational reconstruction rearranges the parts of Heath's essay according to the four central activities Botha identifies in the formulation of theoretical problems: 1) identifying the problematic state of affairs; 2) describing the problematic state of affairs; 3) constructing problems; and 4) evaluating problems according to well-formedness and significance. The result is a close reading of Heath's essay that reveals in minute detail his reasoning strategies, and highlights how he revolutionized film theory by attempting to integrate Lacanian psychoanalysis and Althusserian Marxism into continental semiotics, under the influence of Kristeva's theories of the signifying practice and the subject-in-process.Website 

Book chapters

• Buckland W, 'The Wes Anderson Brand: New Sincerity Across Media' in Lisa Perrott, Holly Rogers, Carol Vernallis (ed.), Transmedia Directors: Artistry, Industry and New Audiovisual Aesthetics, Bloomsbury (2020)
  ISBN: 9781501339271 eISBN: 9781501339295
  Website 
• Buckland W, '“The Film Editors who Invented the Hollywood Renaissance”' in Peter Kramer and Yannis Tzioumakis (ed.), The Hollywood Renaissance: Revisiting American Cinema's Most Celebrated Era, Bloomsbury Academic (2018)
  ISBN: 9781501337888 eISBN: 9781501337918
  Website 
• Buckland W, '“Creating a Cliffhanger: Narration in The Lost World: Jurassic Park”' in Morris N (ed.), A Companion to Steven Spielberg, Wiley Blackwell (2017)
  ISBN: 978-1-118-72691-4
  Abstract Part One. Chapter 6Website 
• Buckland W, '“Film Narratology: Causality, Puzzles, and Narrative Twists”' in Conley T, Vaughan H (ed.), Film Theory Handbook, Anthem Press (2017)
  
• Buckland W, '“The Craft of Independent Filmmaking: Editing in John Sayles’ Return of the Secaucus Seven and Baby It’s You”' in King G (ed.), A Companion to American Indie Film, Wiley (2016)
  ISBN: 9781118758328 eISBN: 9781118758359
  Abstract Part Six. Chapter 18Website 
• Buckland W, 'The Politics of Form: A Conceptual Introduction to ‘Screen Theory’' in Molloy C, Tzioumakis Y (ed.), A Companion to Film and Politics, Routledge (2016)
  ISBN: 9780415717397
  Abstract Chapter 4Website 
• Buckland W, 'Inception’s Videogame Logic' in Furby J, Joy S (ed.), The Cinema of Christopher Nolan, Wallflower, an imprint of Columbia University Press (2015)
  ISBN: 9780231173971 eISBN: 9780231850766
  Website 
• Buckland W, 'Cognitive Semiotics Revisited: Reframing the Frame' in Maarten Coëgnarts M, Kravanja P (ed.), Embodied Cognition and Cinema, Leuven University Press (2015)
  ISBN: 9789462700284
  Website 
• Buckland W, 'Source Code’s Videogame Logic' in Buckland W (ed.), Hollywood Puzzle Films, Routledge (2014)
  ISBN: 9780415622462
  Abstract Chapter 10Website 
• Buckland W, 'The Acousmatic Voice and Metaleptic Narration in Inland Empire' in The oxford handbook of sound and image in digital media, Oxford university press (2013)
  ISBN: 9780199757640
  Website 
• Elsaesser T, Buckland W, 'The life-cycle of "Slumdog Millionaire" on the web' in The slumdog phenomenon: a critical anthology, Anthem Press (2013)
  ISBN: 9780857282927
  Website 
• Buckland W, 'Measuring online word-of-mouth: the initial reception of Inland Empire (2006) on the web' in American independent cinema: indie, indiewood and beyond, Routledge (2012)
  ISBN: 9780415684293 eISBN: 9780203143704
  Website 
• Buckland W, 'Ghost director. Did Hooper or Spielberg direct 'Poltergeist'?' in Digital Tools in Media Studies : analysis and research. An overview, Transcript Verlag (2009)
  ISBN: 9783837610239
  Website 
• Buckland WS, 'Film and media studies pedagogy' in Oxford handbook of film and media studies, Oxford University Press (2008)
  ISBN: 978-0-19-517596-7
  Abstract The Oxford Handbook of Film and Media Studiesis a major new reference work that provides the best single-volume source of original scholarship on the intersection of film and media studies. Comprised of twenty chapters written by experts in their fields, this work presents an authoritative, in-depth, and up-to-date assessment of film and media in the early twenty-first century in the U.S. and abroad. Some essays survey particular issues, such as the changing concept of 'realism' in film. Others look at current media practices, with special attention to new media. There are contributions by industry professionals, presenting an inside look at film and media today. TheHandbookdeals with issues as wide ranging and pertinent as copyright, globalization, television programming, video game genres, the ideologies of media, and movie going in India. As with otherOxford Handbooks, the contributors cover the field in a comprehensive yet accessible way that is suitable for those wishing to gain a good working knowledge of an area of study and where it's headed.

Reviews

• Buckland W, review of Mise en Scene and film style: from classical Hollywood to new media art, in New Review of Film and Television Studies 14 (2) (2016) pp.295-298ISSN: 1740-0309
  Website 
• Buckland W, review of What Does the Statistical Style Analysis of Film Involve? A Review of Moving Into Pictures. More on Film History, Style, and Analysis, in Literary and Linguistic Computing 23 (2) (2008) pp.219-230ISSN: 0268-1145 eISSN: 1477-4615
  Website 

Other Publications (books)

(ed.) with Edward Branigan, The Routledge Encyclopedia of Film Theory (2014)

(ed.) Film Theory & Contemporary Hollywood Movies (2009); 

(ed.), Puzzle Films: Complex Storytelling in Contemporary Cinema (2009); 

Directed by Steven Spielberg: Poetics of the Contemporary Hollywood Blockbuster (2006);

Studying Contemporary American Film: A Guide to Movie Analysis (2002) (with Thomas Elsaesser); 

The Cognitive Semiotics of Film (2000);

Film Studies: An Introduction (fifth edition, 2015); formerly Teach Yourself Film Studies;

(ed.) The Film Spectator: From Sign to Mind (1995).

Consultancy

Editor of the journal the New Review of Film and Television Studies (Routledge, 2003-2016) (editorial board member 2017-).

Member of the editorial board of the journal Signata: Annales des sémiotiques.

Member of the editorial boards of the following book series: Thinking Cinema (Continuum International Publishers) and The Hollywood Studio System (Routledge).

Reviewer of manuscripts and book proposals for Amsterdam University Press, Edinburgh University Press, Blackwell, The Open University Press, Wallflower Press, MIT Press, Palgrave Macmillan, Berghahn, Bloomsbury Academic, and Routledge.

Conferences

Recent conferences:

Keynote: “Revisiting Videogame Logic: Impossible Storyworlds in the Contemporary Hollywood Blockbuster.”
Fast, Slow & Reverse. Faces of Contemporary Film Narration: Around Mainstream Cinema, Gdańsk, 24th–25th May 2017.

“The Impossible Storyworlds of Michel Gondry’s Music Videos.”
Watching Music Colloquium, Paris Philharmonic, December 2-3, 2016.

“Symbolic Meanings in Filmic Discourse: From Syntagm/Paradigm to Embodied Cognition (by way of Metaphor/Metonymy).”
Cinepoetics Workshop, Freie Universität Berlin, June 8-10, 2016.

“‘Practical Ways of Thinking’: Challenging the Film Theory/Film Practice Division.”
Film-Philosophy Conference, University of Oxford, July 20-22, 2015.

“The Dissociation of Body and Voice in The Trial (1963) and Inland Empire (2006).”
Listening Cinematically Conference, Royal Holloway, University of London, 25-26 June, 2015.

“The Craft of Independent Filmmaking.”
Independent States Conference, Institute for Creative Enterprise, Edge Hill University, 4-5 September 2014.

Keynote: “Source Code’s Videogame Logic.”
Film, Virtuality, and the Body conference at Rome 3 University, 26-28 November 2013.

Keynote: “Cognitive Semiotics Revisited.”
Opening address at the International Congress of the Colombian Association for Semiotic Studies, Jorge Tadeo Lozano University, Bogota, Colombia September 16, 2013.