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Dr Alexander Fisher

Lecturer in Film Studies
Email: a.c.fisher@qub.ac.uk
Tel: 028 9097 3450
Ext: 3450
Office:  Room 302, 12 University Square
Address: School of Creative Arts, Queen’s University Belfast, BT7 1NN

 

Key Roles: Undergraduate Programme Convener (Film)


Achievements and Distinctions:

-AHRC Research Network Grant - two-year project ‘World Cinema On Demand’ (2012-1014).
-External Examiner, English and Media Writing, Southampton Solent University (2007-2011).


Research Interests:

Sub-Saharan African cinemas; cinema in postcolonial contexts; national cinemas (esp. outside Europe and North America); Third Cinema; music and film; film sound; online distribution of world cinemas.

Current Work:

Alexander Fisher’s primary research explores sub-Saharan African cinemas, with particular regard to music and sound, and he has published widely on the work of Ousmane Sembene, Djibril Diop Mambéty, Med Hondo, and Souleymane Cissé. More generally, he is interested in the aesthetic, cultural and political aspects of ‘world cinema’, and is currently researching recent transformations in international film distribution and culture as part of the AHRC-funded project ‘World Cinema on Demand: Film Education and Distribution in the Streaming Media Era’. Other interests include postcolonialism and film, Third Cinema, diasporic cinemas, the national/trans-national, film sound, and authorship, and he is always interested in projects that investigate how cross-cultural and/or cross-disciplinary readings of cinema inform established debates in film studies.

 

Selected Publications:

 

Refereed journal articles:

‘Music, Magic and the Mythic: Parallel Discourses and Souleymane Cissé’s Yeelen’ in Cinej Cinema Journal, Vol. 2, No.1, Winter 2012 (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh).

‘Voice-Over, Oral Culture and Narrative Agency: Ousmane Sembene’s Borom Sarret’ in Cinephile 8:1 (special issue: ‘The Voice-Over’), Spring 2012 (Vancouver: University of British Columbia).

’Between “the Housewife” and the “Philosophy Professor”: Music, Narration, and Address in Ousmane Sembene’s Xala’ in Visual Anthropology, 24:4, July-Sept. 2011 (London: Routledge).

‘Funding, Ideology, and the Aesthetics of the “Development Film” in Postcolonial Zimbabwe’ in The Journal of African Cinemas, 2:2, Winter 2010 (Bristol: Intellect).

‘Med Hondo’s Sarraounia: The Musical Articulation of Cultural Transformation’ in Music, Sound, and the Moving Image, 3:2, Autumn 2009 (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press).

Chapters in edited books:

‘Aristotle’s Plot’ in David Murphy and Lizelle Bisschoff (eds.) Africa’s Lost Classics: New Histories of African Cinema, forthcoming 2014 (Oxford: Legenda).­

 ‘Music in African Cinema’ in Sheila Petty and Blandine Stefanson (eds.) The Directory of World Cinema: Africa, forthcoming 2013 (Bristol: Intellect).

‘Music, Modernism, and Modernization in Djibril Diop Mambéty’s Touki Bouki’ in John Hill and Kevin Rockett (eds), National Cinemas and World Cinema, 2006 (Dublin: Four Courts Press).

Short articles/reviews:

Film reviews in Blandine Stefanson and Sheila Petty (eds.) The Directory of World Cinema: Africa, forthcoming, 2012 (Bristol: Intellect).

‘David Murphy, Sembene: Imagining Alternatives in Film and Fiction’ (book review) in Scope, No.6, Autumn 2006 (University of Nottingham).

Conference papers:

‘African Cinema On Demand: African Film Scholarship in the Era of Online Distribution’ (Evolving African Film Cultures Conference, University of Westminster, November 2012).

‘Modes of Griot Inscription in African Cinema’ (Society of Cinema and Media Studies Conference, Los Angeles, 2010).

‘Hearing African Cinema: Music, Discourse, and the Griot’ (Screen Studies Conference, University of Glasgow, 2009).

‘Parallel Discourses in Souleymane Cissé’s Yeelen’ (MeCCSA Annual Conference, University of Bradford, 2009).

‘“Auditive Cultures”, Authorship, and Address in Ousmane Sembene’s Xala’ (MeCCSA PGN Conference, University of Ulster, 2007).

‘Uses of Music in African Cinema’ (MeCCSA Annual Conference, Leeds Metropolitan University, 2006).

‘Music and Modernization in African Cinema’ (Irish Film Seminar, Trinity College Dublin, 2005).

Invited research presentations:

‘Music and Narration in African Cinema’ (Moviemakers and Scholars Series, Department of Film Studies, University of North Carolina Wilmington, November 2010).

Film, Funding, and Developmental Communication in Postcolonial Zimbabwe (QUB Postcolonial Research Forum, November 2009).

‘Researching Music in Film’ (QUB Film Studies Research Seminar Series, March 2009).

Research Students:

First and second supervised successful doctoral projects on contemporary Irish cinema and Expanded Cinema.

 

Current Research Students:

Claudia Bossay (Representations of history in contemporary Chilean cinema)

 

Former research students:

Jennie Carlsten (Trauma and Irish cinema)

Paula Blair (Expanded Cinema