Professor Steve Chibnall

Steve is believed to be the only Professor of British Cinema in the world, and is one of the UK’s senior film historians.  He is director of DMU’s Cinema and Television History (CATH) Research Centre and curator of the Hammer Script Archive, the Jimmy Sangster Collection, the Francis Searle Archive and the Roy Ward Baker Bequest (all lodged with the CATH Centre).  He is also owner of the Steve Chibnall Archive, a private collection of tens of thousands of pieces of British film and popular culture memorabilia which postgraduate students in the CATH Centre may draw upon in their research.  He has written or edited ten books, published dozens of articles and book chapters, featured on television and radio over a long career and currently contributes sleeve notes and commentary moderations to DVD releases by Odeon Entertainment and the BFI.  He is Visiting Professor at The Cinema Museum in London, where he organises frequent on-stage events, co-series editor for Routledge’s British Popular Cinema series, and a board member of the Journal of British Cinema and Television (EUP).  Steve’s main responsibilities at DMU are research student supervision, and research group leadership.

• Cinema and Television History (CATH) Research Centre

View a full listing of Steve Chibnall's publications and outputs.

Co-authored book: The British ‘B’ Film, (with Brian McFarlane), BFI/Palgrave, 2009, Pb 978-1-84457-319-6; Hb 978-1-84457-320-2; 356 pp.

Monograph: Quota Quickies: The Birth of the British B Film, BFI, 2006; Pb 1-84457-155-6; Hb 1-84457-154-8; pages 314 

Monograph: Brighton Rock, I.B.Tauris, 2004; Pb 1-85043-400-X; pages 128

Monograph: Get Carter, I.B.Tauris, 2003; Pb 1-86064-910-6; pages 136

Monograph: Law -and Order News: Crime Reporting in the British Press, Originally published by Tavistock 1977, republished in 2001 in Tavistock Classics series by Taylor and Francis; 2001; Hb 0415-264-081

Edited Book: British Horror Cinema (ed with Julian Petley), Routledge; 2001; Hb 0-415-23003-9; Pb 0-415-23004-7 Pages 256.

Edited Book: Sim Branaghan, The British Film Poster, BFI, 2006. Pages 304, illustrations 350.

Edited Journal: Journal of British Cinema and Television, 7:3 Special issue on Continental Connections, co-ed with James Chapman. EUP 2010

Edited Journal: Journal of British Cinema and Television, 4:2 Special Issue on Space and Place in British Cinema and Television (ed. with Julian Petley). EUP, 2007 

Exhibition Catalogue: Kiss and Kill: Film Visions of Brighton, Royal Pavilion Museums and Galleries, Brighton and Hove, 2002 (joint-authored with Frank Gray and Andy Medhurst); ISBN 0 948723-49-1 pages 84.

• British cinema past and present especially: History of British B Movies, Censorship and stardom 1945-60, British film poster design, British widescreen films, Anglo-Italian Co-productions, Adelphi Films. 
• Crime in film, literature and news. 
• The history of graphic illustration for books and posters.
• Sociology of collecting.

• British cinema
• Sociology of collecting

BA Hons Sociology, MA Sociology, PhD (all University of Essex)

Research student supervision

Cine Sisters Week, The Cinema Museum, London, 13-19 October 2012. Including the following live events:

Cine Sisters at Christmas, The Cinema Museum, London, 13 and 20 December, comprising:

• 13 Dec. Cine Sister Hyde: a 40th anniversary screening of Dr. Jekyll and Sister Hyde (1972) with the film’s writer and stars in aid of the Ralph Bates Cancer Research Fund.
• 20 Dec. Funny Women: female comics from yesterday and today.

‘The Lonely Passion of Kate Hudson: Filming and Falling in the Venetian Summertime’, David Lean Centenary Conference, University of London, July 2008. 

‘Nowhere Else to Go: The death of the Travelogue’, British Culture and Society in the 1970s Conference, University of Portsmouth, July 2008 (invited). 

‘Coronation Blues’, Social Fears and Moral Panics, IAMHIST international conference, University of Aberystwyth, July 2009 (invited).

‘A Family Film Business: The Adelphi Archives’, Archives and Auteurs international conference, University of Stirling, September 2009.

‘From English Rose to Italian Diva: the tragic, glamorous trajectory of Belinda Lee’ (with Sandra Frost), Desiring Divas conference, Downing College, University of Cambridge, September 2011.

International Conference: A Century of Cinema Exhibition at Phoenix Square, Leicester, in partnership with the Cinema Exhibitors’ Association and the Cinema Theatre Association, 10 and 11 July 2010.

International Conference: Bloodlines: British Horror Past and Present, DMU and Phoenix Square, Leicester, 4 and 5 March 2010.

Symposia organised: 

Symposium: Associate Research Fellows’ Day. Presentations by six CATH Associate Research Fellows and by guest speaker, James Patterson (MACE Archive), 16 Feb 2011.

Film Festival: 14th British Silent Film Festival, The Barbican, London, April 2011. Associate Producer.

Film Festival: 15th British Silent Film Festival, Arts Picturehouse, Cambridge, April 2012. Associate Producer.

Film Festival: Hammer Has Risen From the Grave, Phoenix Square, Leicester, July 2012. Director.

British Cinema History: currently available

First supervisor for 

Second supervisor for

RIF Project funding:  Jan 210 – July 2010 The Establishment And Launch Of A New Research Centre For Cinema And Television History In The Faculty Of Humanities. Role: PI. Collaborators: Laraine Porter, Dr. Ian Hunter, Stuart Hanson.

RIF Project funding:  Jan-July 2012 Hammer Has Risen from the Grave film festival at Phoenix Square, Leicester. PI.

Editorial Board: Journal of British Cinema and Television 

Series Editor (joint): British Popular Cinema, Routledge.

• Journal of British Cinema and Television.
• Music, Sound and the Moving Image.

Other Reviewing Activities:

Steve Chibnall, Get Carter, London: I.B.Tauris, 2003 (GC).

Steve Chibnall and Brian McFarlane, The British B Film, London: Palgrave/BFI, 2009 (BBF).

Both QQ and BBF were given book launches and accompanying film seasons at BFI Southbank (January 2007 and December 2009).  Chibnall wrote programme notes for the screenings and introduced two of them (in the case of BBF, with co-author Brian McFarlane).  The introductions were followed by book signing sessions outside the BFI bookshop, where the majority of purchasers were not academics.  The BBF book and film season were the subject of articles in The Independent (Geoffrey Macnab, 11/12/09) and Sight & Sound (Andrew Roberts, Jan 2010).  BBF was reviewed by the TLS (described as ‘admirable’) alongside the new Sherlock Holmes (d Guy Richie) movie in January 2010.  British B Film seasons inspired by the book took place at Phoenix Square, Leicester (Dec 2009) and The Duke of York’s, Brighton (Mar 2010).  Chibnall was an invited speaker at both of these.  The BBC interviewed him for a Television documentary on the British ‘B’ Film on BBC Four (…09), and for two Radio 4 programmes on small British film studios and the work of short-film producer, Harold Baim (26/04/08).  All programmes were inspired in whole or in part by the book.  The publication of the book was the subject of an internet chat room on www.britmovie.co.uk, which currently has over 100 postings, the vast majority from non-academics.  It was the best-selling book on British Cinema on www.amazon.co.uk in December 2009, and Chibnall received a number of emails and phone calls from members of the public saying how much they have enjoyed reading it and asking further questions.  He received a personal letter from film producer/distributor Richard Gordon in New York, congratulating him on the research.  The book sold out its first print run inside a year and a revised version has been re-printed. 

The impact of Chibnall’s monograph on Get Carter has built steadily since its release in 2003.  It was initially described in a review in The Times as ‘a model of the genre’ (monographs on single films), ‘brilliant’ and ‘illuminating’ (25/03/04).  The author was given the opportunity to interview director Mike Hodges for an article in Sight and Sound (Sept 2003) on his new film (I’ll Sleep When I’m Dead) and was invited to the cast and crew preview at BAFTA. GC was quoted in the UK Film Council’s Stories We Tell Ourselves: The Cultural Impact of UK Film (2009), and one of that report’s authors told the author that he regarded the monograph as ‘a model of cultural impact research’, that had influenced the methodology of the report.  Consequently, the UK Film Council agreed to DMU hosting a conference on the Cultural Impact of UK Film and to partnering a DMU studentship on the dissemination and cultural impact of UK screen heritage.  Unfortunately, the UKFC was abolished before these plans could come to fruition.  However, in October 2010 Chibnall was contacted by a commercial company, elevenfiftyfive, organisers of one-off cinema events to promote Volkwagen cars, to act as a consultant on their ‘See Film Differently’ screening of Get Carter at Newcastle Racecourse (02/12/10).  Chibnall curated a 100-piece exhibition (largely drawn from his own archive) at the Racecourse, introduced the screening, gave an interview to BBC Radio Newcastle (02/12/10), and did a book signing.  He was retained as consultant for subsequent Volkswagen screenings of Trainspotting (1996) in Edinburgh in February 2011, and A Clockwork Orange at Brunel University, Uxbridge in June 2011, supplying captions for the accompanying exhibitions.  A total of over 23,000 people applied on-line for tickets to these screenings.

Further recent evidence of impact from Chibnall’s published research since 1995 has included an invitation from the Graham Greene Festival to give a talk on film adaptations of Brighton Rock at Berkhampsted School, where Green was brought up.  The invitation was recognition of Chibnall’s monograph on the 1947 film of Brighton Rock (I.B. Tauris, 2005) on the occasion of the release of a new adaptation of the novel.  The director of the new film, Rowan Joffe, told Chibnall that his monograph had been an important reference source during the scripting process.  The monograph is also used during the regular guided tours of Brighton Rock’s locations.