I am over the moon to hear I hit the shortlist for the Film-Philosophy journal Annual Article Award 2020.

This was for my most recent essay, which explored the idea of time travel in the movies through Planet of the Apes (1968), The Terminator (1984), and Back to the Future (1985). It had the somewhat cumbersome – but playful – title, “Deleuze’s Three Syntheses Go to Hollywood: The Tripartite Cinema of Time Travel, Many Worlds and Altered States” (2019).

Usually the shortlist would be released mid-year, and the first placed article officially announced at the annual Film-Philosophy conference with some wine! However, as this year’s conference was cancelled due to global events, the shortlist and winner were dropped emails late last week…

Talking of the winner, the award went to the wonderful Catherine Wheatley (senior Lecturer in Film Studies at King’s College London) for her brilliant essay “The Third City: The Post Secular Space of the Dardenne Brothers’ Seraing” (2019). I was blown away when I first read the piece late last year. Not only that, Catherine has written not one but two of my favourite books of film philosophy of recent years, Stanley Cavell and Film: Scepticism and Self-Reliance at the Cinema (Bloomsbury, 2019), and Michael Haneke’s Cinema: The Ethic of the Image (Berghahn, 2009). So I am delirious that the judges considered my stuff as being in the same league…

Having now read the last two of the essays on the shortlist I didn’t catch upon publication, I can confidently recommend them all! There is definitely something for every kind of film lover – and Film-Philosophy is free access too:
> Chelsea Birks / Lisa Coulthard, “Divine Comedies: Post-Theology and Laughter in the Films of Bruno Dumont” (2019)
> David Deamer, “Deleuze’s Three Syntheses Go to Hollywood: The Tripartite Cinema of Time Travel, Many Worlds and Altered States” (2019)
> Janet Harbord, “Greta Gerwig’s Gestures: Agamben in the Land of Stardom”
> Joseph Jenner, “Towards a Chthonic Spectatorship: Becoming-With the Aquatic in Evolution”
> ARTICLE AWARD: Catherine Wheatley, “The Third City: The Post Secular Space of the Dardenne Brothers’ Seraing”

And you can check out what the judges had to say about the 2020 selection and Catherine’s winning essay on the Film-Philosophy Annual Article Award page.