“A film is - or should be - more like music than like fiction. It should be a progression of moods and feelings. The theme, what's behind the emotion, the meaning, all that comes later"
- Stanley Kubrick -
ABOUT ME
I am Full Professor of Film Studies at the Université libre de Bruxelles. I have chaired the Film Studies Department from 1991 to 2011 and was Visiting Professor at the Universities of Montréal (2013), Strasbourg (2015) and Buenos Aires (2019). I am the author of Contemporary Romanian Cinema: The History of an Unexpected Miracle (2013) and of Meaning in Film: Relevant Structures in Soundtrack and Narrative (1991). I have co-edited Revisiting Film Melodrama (2014), New Perspectives in Sound Studies (2004) and La chanson dans les cinémas d’Europe et d’Amérique Latine 1960-2010 (2019). I have published widely on emotions and music in films, Romanian cinema (most recent chapters of The Global Auteur, 2016 and The and The New Romanian Cinema, 2019), the aesthetics of silent melodramas, the cinema of Michelangelo Antonioni. I am Series editor for Rethinking Cinema a bilingual collection published by Peter Lang.
RESEARCH INTERESTS
Emotions and music in films
Romanian cinema
Early film melodrama
Modern European cinema
PROJECTS AND NETWORKS
DISTINCTIONS
Centre de recherche en Cinéma et Arts du spectacle de la faculté de Lettres, Traduction & Communication (LTC), Université libre de Bruxelles
International Society for the Study of Early Cinema, is an association for people interested in cinema from its beginnings to 1915.
The Magic Lantern and its Cultural Impact as a Visual Mass Medium in Belgium
MRC is an international organization to foster interdisciplinary and collaborative research on melodrama
Centre interdisciplinaire, Université libre de Bruxelles
2011
Officier de l’Ordre de Léopold
2012
Commandeur de l’Ordre de la Couronne
2014
Prix « George Littera » pour le meilleur ouvrage d’histoire du cinéma décerné par l’Union des critiques de cinéma roumains pour, Contemporary Romanian Cinema : The History of an Unexpected Miracle », Columbia University Press
2018
Prix « 100 Romanians for a Centenary » décérné par le Ministère des Affaires Etrangères de Roumanie à 10 personnalités du monde culturel la diaspora roumaine en Belgique
2020
Prix « George Littera » pour le volume Romanian Cinema Inside Out (auquel j'ai contribué)
2022:
Membre de l'académie Royale de Belgique