Visiting speakers, guest lectures and masterclasses

Film and Television at Kingston involves a full-time teaching team who are all experts in their field. They are active researchers and published authors, respected editors, photographers and sound designers. But we also benefit from people who teach specific modules while continuing their professional work - such as Allan Swift, who has written scripts for Hollyoaks, Brookside, EastEnders and Casualty for the last 25 years, and also teaches two modules for the Film and Television degrees.

Film and Television also has two Visiting Professors, members of the team with very different, but very distinguished, backgrounds in filmmaking, who bring their experience and expertise to guest lectures, masterclasses and premiere screenings. Professor John Fuegi is an internationally-acclaimed director of documentaries, and the author of seventeen books; Paul Andrew Williams is the director of London to Brighton, named the best British film of 2006. Both have come to Kingston to talk to students one-on-one and in groups about the subjects they know best - and in Spring 2008, we hosted the world exclusive of Paul's second film, The Cottage, in a gala at the Odeon with actor Reece Shearsmith.

People

The Film and Television team at Kingston are in touch with a network of contacts, from professors to directors. Guest speakers come in on a regular basis, to talk about their experience or to offer hands-on guidance.

Event	Poster
Some recent guests include Chris Skarratt, who set up his own production company in 2006 and is currently producing the DVD front-end menus for industry giants like Nintendo and Film 4 - he brought in his own list of professional contacts for final year students, and arranged an apprenticeship with his company, Petrol, for one of our graduates.
Rachael Hodges, who reads the news on Radio 5 to three million listeners per day, brought in her BBC equipment to give students a taste of news broadcasting.
Allan Swift, with 25 years of TV scriptwriting to his name, led a class based on his own Hollyoaks screenplays, inviting staff and students to edit, rewrite and act out his work, under the tight deadlines he faces himself.
Professor David Lavery, who has published books on every cult TV show of the last ten years, from X-Files to Alias, gave a special talk about his research into the cult phenomenon Lost.
Dr Mike Witt, from Roehampton University, is one of the world's leading experts on the pioneer of French New Wave cinema, Jean-Luc Godard. Having recently interviewed the director for Sight and Sound magazine, Mike was a special guest for our French New Wave module.