Dr Rachel Johnson

Profile

My research and teaching are motivated by a singular question: how can we make global film culture more equitable? To this end, I have undertaken projects on European film festivals, African diasporic film festivals, decolonising cinephilia and the curation of migration cinema. My first book, Film Festivals, Ideology and Italian Art Cinema (Amsterdam University Press, 2023), interrogates the role of major, competitive European film festivals like Cannes in reproducing exclusionary film canons, hierarchies of taste, and even geopolitical space. I have written extensively on the value of ideology critique as a method for understanding the relationship between film institutions’ material realities (such as funding regimes) and their representation of films, people and places. My current research builds on this keen awareness of cinematic (in)justice to explore the many worlds and meanings of cinephilia made possible by the work of film critics, curators, distributors, archivists and filmmakers in the geopolitical Global South.

I consider research to be, above all, collaborative, and have had the pleasure of working with numerous academics and film practitioners both locally and internationally. Partnering on the Canada Research Council-funded project, Decolonizing Film Festival Research in a Post-Pandemic World, I worked with African film festival acacdemics and curators from Canada, Brazil, Senegal and the UK to collaboratively redefine festivals’ role in the dissemination of African film heritage. In 2022, I jointly formed the New Voices in Cinephilia network with Professor Stephanie Dennison. Together, we convened film scholars and practitioners from the US, Mexico, Senegal and the UK to set the groundwork for new understandings of cinephilia which re-centre marginalised perspectives. I regularly work with local Leeds film institutions such as the Hyde Park Picture House and Leeds International Film Festival, and co-direct the city-wide film club, Leeds Cineforum. I consider my activities with the Cineforum to be co-extensive with my academic work, forming two halves of a wider practice that aims to empower film curators and viewers.

Research interests

My main research interests are in film instutions and infrastructures, from film festivals to film criticism and film distribution. I bring a focus on decolonial theories, particularly those of pluriversality and the colonial matrices of power, to bear on the study of how cinema is valued, shared, mobilised, and loved by curators, archivists, critics and audiences. While I have researched European and migration film festivals since 2015, my current work focuses acutely on notions of cinematic justice, cinephilia and African cinemas. Today, my research explores the practices of film love that have been excluded from our inherited narratives of cinephilia. I ask which new understandings of cinephilia might emerge when we foreground the agency of those typically held ‘outside the frame’ of dominant conceptions of film culture.

I share a sample of my writings below to offer a wider sense of my research interests:

Academic writings

• Rachel Johnson. 2025. Decolonising Through Co-Curation? Women Creators of the Future, Festival Films Femmes Afrique and Leeds International Film Festival. Beyond the (De)Colonial Container, Alphaville Journal of Film and Screen Media.
• Rachel Johnson. 2025. “On Studying Film Festivals and Migration: Borderlands and Beginnings”. In Shaping Film Festivals in a Changing World. Dorota Ostrowska and Tamara Falicov (eds). Amsterdam University Press.
• Abigail Gilmore, Sue Hayton, Trevor MacFarlane, John Wright, Ben Dunn and Rachel Johnson. 2024.”Cultural policy and the pandemic: Response and recovery in the United Kingdom”. In Pandemic culture: The impacts of COVID-19 on the UK cultural sector and implications for the future. Ben Walmsley, Abigail Gilmore and Dave O'Brien (eds). Manchester University Press.
• Rachel Johnson. 2023. Film Festivals, Ideology and Art Cinema: Politics, Histories and Cultural Value through Italian Cinema. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press.
• Alan O’Leary and Rachel Johnson. “Flow”. 2022. Transnational Modern Languages: A Handbook. Jennifer Burns and Derek Duncan (eds). Liverpool University Press.
• Rachel Johnson. 2022. Film Festivals and Ideology Critique: A Method. Cinergie – Il Cinema E Le Altre Arti.
• Rachel Johnson. 2022. Producing Maka: Hybridisation and Dialogue in Academic Filmmaking. The Italianist.
• Rachel Johnson. 2020. A Brutal Humanism for the New Millennium? The Legacy of Neorealism in Contemporary Cinema of Migration. Journal of Italian Cinema and Media Studies.

Public writings

• “Histories of film exhibition, migration and race in the Alec Baron archive”. Leeds University Libraries Blog.
• “Film Circulation in Times of Coronavirus”. Curating and Exhibiting Visual Culture in Times of Coronavirus. 
• “Research Digest: Social Security for Cultural Practitioners”. Culture Hive.
• “Three Forays into Ideology in the Age of Post-truth Politics”. Open Democracy.

Qualifications

• PhD in Film Studies, University of Leeds
• MA in European Culture and Thought: Culture, University College London
• BA in English Literature and Italian, University of Leeds

Professional memberships

• NECS (European Network for Cinema and Media Studies)
• BAFTSS (British Association of Film, Television and Screen Studies)
• IAMHIST (International Association for Media and History)

Student education

I teach on a range of modules on Film Studies and Italian Studies programmes. As well as delivering introductions to audio-visual cultures, film studies and Italian cinema, I deliver research-led teaching that focuses on film festivals, curation, representation and contemporary cinema’s cultural and institutional contexts. Modules I have taught include:

• Film Arts & Industries (PG)
• Film Programming for Venues and Streaming (PG)
• Independent Projects (PG)
• Creative Work (PG)
• Film Programming and Curation (UG)
• Women’s Authorship in World Cinema (UG)
• Directing World Cinemas (UG)
• Current Inquiries into Film Studies (UG)
• Introduction to Audio-Visual Cultures (UG)
• Cinematic Themes (UG)
• Italian Cinema: Genre and Social Change (UG)
• Introduction to Italian Cinema (UG)
• Italian Language (UG)
• Italian History from Fascism to the Present (UG)

Supervision

I welcome inquiries from prospective PhD students with interests in: film festivals, film exhibition and curation, African cinemas, cinephilia, film philosophy, cinemas of migration/displacement/unsettlement and Italian cinema.

I am currently supervising PhDs on Pan-African film history and the Puzzle film, and have previously supervised PhD student projects on film festivals and cinephilia.

I have supervised a number of taught undergraduate and postgraduate projects in Film Studies. Topics I have supervised include: queer cinema, gender and genre, postcolonial and decolonial cinemas (Sembene’s films), race on film, drag and media, film history, Italian cinema. I am also currently supervising a number of practice-based projects, including videographic criticism (video essays) and podcast documentaries.

Research groups and institutes

• Centre for World Cinemas and Digital Cultures
• Leeds Arts and Humanities Research Institute
• Cinema and Television