A De Montfort University Leicester (DMU) academic has won a respected award to work with colleagues from two other universities on a research project mapping European cinema-going in the 1950s.
Dr. Pierluigi Ercole, of DMU’s Cinema and Television History (CATH) Research Centre, together with Dr. Daniela Treveri-Gennari at Oxford Brookes University and Dr. Lies Van de Vijver at Belgium’s University of Ghent, have been awarded £7,551 by the British Academy’s Leverhulme Small Research Grant scheme.
The scheme provides up to £10,000 to talented researchers, supporting initial project planning and development, direct costs of research, and the advancement of research through workshops, conferences or partner visits.
The year-long project will compare cinema programming and oral history data in 1950s Great Britain, Italy and Belgium in order to identify patterns in cinema-going experiences across diverse film cultures.
Dr Ercole said: “Research into the history of cinema-going has often been conducted at a national level. Our project will be one of the first adopting a comparative approach across three cities in Europe, allowing us to paint a picture of how films were circulated and received in the 1950s.
“This is a timely project that seeks to understand our cultural connectedness beyond national borders and I am very pleased that it will also help to broaden the research profile of Film Studies at DMU and create new collaborations with European partners.”
The project’s outcomes will be shared with the general public at events in Leicester and Bari in Italy, and a conference will be hosted by the University of Ghent.
Posted on Friday 6 May 2016