Carla Ambrosio Garcia Ambrosio Garcia

Film theory and practice; film and its intersections with psychoanalysis and continental philosophy; European cinema and artists' film.

I completed my PhD in Film Studies Research at King's in December 2013. My project investigated the notion of retreat, understood as gesture and circumscribed space, as these can be present in film, the experience of film, and the practice of filmmaking. Following a psychoanalytic methodology, it engaged with the theory of the cinematic apparatus, and with some examples of European cinema (in particular the films of Ingmar Bergman, Pier Paolo Pasolini, Manoel de Oliveira and a collaboration between Georges Perec and Bernard Queysanne) as well as the works of Tacita Dean, Ben Rivers and Jayne Parker. Two of the main original aspects in this study are its use of post-Kleinian psychoanalysis, notably represented in the figure of Wilfred Bion, hitherto overlooked by film studies; and the articulation of retreat as a pivotal moment of growth, thus as a gesture and space that are also future-oriented. 

As a Graduate Teaching Assistant I led seminars for the modules 'Introduction to Film Studies: Forms', 'Introduction to Film Studies: Contexts' and 'Film History: 1945-1980'.