Since its inception, BIMI has benefited materially and intellectually from the support of the University of Pittsburgh, and specifically from our collaboration with colleagues in the Film Studies Program in the Dietrich School of Arts and Sciences. This collaboration has taken many forms, including faculty visits and student exchanges, but its principal manifestations are the annual Pittsburgh Lecture and the biennial BIMI-Pitt Research Workshop.
The annual lecture takes place in the Birkbeck Cinema every autumn term, and it has featured speakers such as Michael Witt, Neepa Majumdar, Adam Lowenstein, and Ben Ogrodnik, talking on topics ranging from audiovisual film history to early sound film in India, via contemporary horror and experimental film in the Rustbelt.
The BIMI-Pitt Research Workshop brings together faculty and research students from Pittsburgh and Birkbeck, who present their work-in-progress to each other and to an audience that includes invited guests from the broader London research and arts community. This workshop, whose general themes have been “Cinema and the City” in 2015, “Urban Change” in 2017 and in 2019 “Displacement in Film Culture” has led to several publications as well as conferences, film seasons, and longer-term collaborative research projects.
Resources and information on previous events
University of Pittsburgh Website
University of Pittsburgh Film and Media Studies Department
It Follows: The University of Pittsburgh Annual Lecture Report and Recording