Niall Flynn is a PhD Candidate at the University of Lincoln School of Film & Media. His project examines recent approaches to materiality in media theory and in particular to Media Ecologies. Niall’s latest  paper is in an internationally leading journal and it peer-reviews ‘scholarship across the humanities disciplines’.  Niall said: you may be interested in my article on watching subtitled cinema, which has been published by the Open Library of Humanities and it is called An Intimate Encounter: Negotiating Subtitled Cinema. 

The question of subtitling has received little attention in Film Studies, despite being the primary means by which foreign-language cinema is experienced. Current literature focuses on important matters of language and translation, but there are other aspects that exceed these matters when we watch subtitled films, aspects which are able to affect and move viewers without relying on explanation through translation. My paper shows how viewers have to negotiate these affective elements in order to apprehend foreign-language films, with special attention on their indeterminate characteristics that escape representation. Continue reading →