Projects per year
Personal profile
Biography
Belinda Smaill is Associate Professor in Film and Screen Studies in the School of Media, Film and Journalism.
She is the Leader of the Environment and Media Research Program at Monash University.
I am an internationally recognised expert on the history and culture of documentary film. My research rethinks the social project of documentary film and media by developing innovative multidisciplinary approaches to the genre, allowing me to challenge understandings of documentary histories and traditions. My first book focused on emotion, showing how for example, pleasure, disgust or hope are activated by documentary, determining their role in public culture. My recent work, including my second book on documentary, has elucidated documentary’s fascination with nonhuman animals, while arguing that we must rethink human and nonhuman in tandem. My work has contributed to film and screen studies by consistently producing knowledge about documentary screen media as an aesthetic and cultural practice of social subjectivity. I have also written made key contributions to Australian Film and Screen Studies and written extensively on women and cinema, particularly female directors.
My recent work continues my interest in documentary as a form of public culture. I am currently undertaking an Australian Research Council funded project (with Therese Davis and Chris Healy) titled “Remaking the Australian Environment Through Documentary Film and Television”. This project aims to investigate how documentary film, television and online media have transformed our sense of the Australian environment since the 1950s. The research will produce the first deeply historicized account of the relationship between documentary media and contemporary environmental consciousness.
Supervision interests
I currently supervise doctoral and masters students in film studies, television studies and related disciplines. I have successfully supervised a range of topics as a primary supervisor and have particualr expertise in: women in film and television, documentary studies, environment and media, ecocinema, animal studies.
Completed projects that I have supervised include:
- Cinematic Encounters with Disasters: Hollywood and Beyond
- Difficult subjects: women, violence and subjectivity in distinguished cinema.
- Human rights film festivals: activism in context
- A transnational history of the Indian New Wave: memories, movements, auteurs.
- Peripheral visions: the refugee-focussed documentary film in “Howard's Australia.”
- Genre, ambiguity and the shifting star persona of Cary Grant
Research area keywords
- Environment
- Documentary Media
- Ecocinema and screen media
- Australian Film and Television
- Gender and Cinema
- Cultural History and Film
- Screen Studies
- Human/More-than-human relations
- Popular cinema, film genre and women
- Histories and aesthetics of documentary
- Film and the Anthropocene
Projects
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Remaking the Australian Environment Through Documentary Film and Television
Smaill, B., Healy, C. & Davis, T.
21/05/19 → 20/05/22
Project: Research
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The history of Asian Australian Cinema: Diaspora, Policy and Ethics
Smaill, B., Khoo, O. & Yue, A.
Australian Research Council (ARC)
2/01/09 → 31/12/11
Project: Research
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Youth, Media and Culture in the Asia Pacific Region
Rodrigues, U. & Smaill, B.
Australian National University
1/10/05 → 31/10/06
Project: Research
Research output
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Rethinking the Human, Rethinking the Essay Film: The Ecocritical Work of The Pearl Button
Smaill, B., 2020, Beyond the Essay Film: Subjectivity, Textuality and Technology. Vassilieva, J. & Williams, D. (eds.). Amsterdam The Netherlands: Amsterdam University Press, p. 141-163 23 p. (Film Culture in Transition).Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceeding › Chapter (Book) › Research › peer-review
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Ecological Relations: FalconCam in Conversation with The Back of Beyond
Smaill, B., Jun 2019, A Companion to Australian Cinema. Collins, F., Landman, J. & Bye, S. (eds.). Hoboken, New Jersey: Wiley-Blackwell, p. 508-524 17 p. (Wiley Blackwell Companions to National Cinema).Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceeding › Chapter (Book) › Research › peer-review
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A Guerra da Beatriz, Timor-Leste and the Women's Film
Smaill, B. M., 2018, In : Critical Arts: a south-north journal of cultural and media studies. 32, 4, p. 1-18 18 p.Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › Research › peer-review
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An ecocritical approach to documentary interactivity: spatial technologies in a film studies frame
Smaill, B., 30 Jul 2018, In : Studies in Documentary Film. 12, 3, p. 173-189 17 p.Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › Research › peer-review
1 Citation (Scopus) -
Cinema of the world and women’s film culture: Susanne Bier’s transnational cinema
Smaill, B., 2018, ReFocus: : The Films of Susanne Bier. Molloy, M., Nielsen, M. & Shriver-Rice, M. (eds.). 1st ed. Edinburgh UK: Edinburgh University Press, p. 211-228 18 p. (ReFocus: The International Directors Series).Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceeding › Chapter (Book) › Research › peer-review
Activities
- 2 Contribution to workshop, seminar, course
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Documenting Environments: technologies, practices and imaginaries
Belinda Smaill (Organiser), James Oliver (Organiser), Therese Davis (Organiser) & Billy Head (Organiser)
28 Nov 2018 → 30 Nov 2019Activity: Participating in or organising an event types › Contribution to workshop, seminar, course
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The Place of the Female Director in 21st Century Film Cultures and Feminist Theory
Therese Davis (Organiser) & Belinda Smaill (Organiser)
7 Nov 2011 → 8 Nov 2011Activity: Participating in or organising an event types › Contribution to workshop, seminar, course