Dr Bella Honess Roe

Biography

Bella joined the department of Dance, Film and Theatre in autumn 2009.  Previously she taught at the Arts University College, Bournemouth, St. Mary's University College, Twickenham and the University of Southern California in Los Angeles.  

She gained her PhD in Critical Studies from the University of Southern California's School of Cinematic Arts in 2009.  Her PhD thesis, entitled Animating Documentary, is on the epistemological and phenomenological implications of the convergence of animation and documentary.  She also holds an MA in Critical Studies from USC and a BA in Philosophy from the University of Cambridge.  Between her BA and MA Bella spent six years working in the film industry in Los Angeles and London, including roles in the development departments at Lakeshore Entertainment (Los Angeles), MGM (Los Angeles), and Granada Film (London).  Subsequently, she tutored writers and script editors on screenwriting workshops in Italy, Australia and New Zealand.  More recently, she worked with the non-profit London-based DocHouse, an organisation devoted to the promotion and exhibition of independent UK and international documentary Film.

Research Interests

Bella's primary current research interest is animated documentary.  She blogs about animated documentary at http://bellahonessroe.wordpress.com/ and is working on a monograph on this topic, to be published by Palgrave Macmillan in 2013.  

She has also researched and published in the areas of British documentary (specifically the workshop movement in the 1980s) and the relationship between Britain and the US as represented in Working Title's romantic comedies.  

Broadly, her research interests encompass documentary, animation, the film and television industries and issues of political economy, British cinema, and transatlantic cultural exchange.
 

Publications

Monograph

Animated Documentary (Forthcoming, Palgrave Macmillian 2013)

Journal Articles

"Uncanny Indexes: Rotoshopped Interviews as Documentary," Animation: An Interdisciplinary Journal vol 7.1 (March 2012), 26 - 38

"Absence, Excess and Epistemological Expansion: Towards a Framework for the Study of Non-fiction Animation," Animation: An Interdisciplinary Journal vol. 6.3 (November, 2011), 215 - 230

"Spatial Contestation and the Loss of Place in Amber's Byker", Journal of British Cinema and Television vol. 4.2 (November 2007), 307 - 321

Book Chapters

"The Canadian Shorts: Establishing Disney's Wartime Style," B. Van Riper (ed) Learning from Mickey, Donald, and Walt: Essays on Disney's Edutainment Films. McFarland, 2011.

"A 'Special' Relationship?  Americans in British Romantic Comedy", S. Abbott & D. Jermyn (eds) Falling in Love Again: The Contemporary Romantic Comedy. I.B. Tauris, 2009

Book and DVD Reviews 

Numerous book reviews for Film International and Animation: An Interdisciplinary Journal

Teaching

Film Analysis (HE1)

Cultural Industries (HE2)

Documentary Film History (HE2)

Placement preparation (HE2)

Animation and the Virtual World (HE3)

Departmental Duties

Bella is Senior Placement Tutor for Film and played an integral part in establishing the Film Studies placement programme at the University of Surrey.  This programme enables students to spend their third year of a four-year degree working in a film, or related, company.  To date, Bella has helped establish placement opportunities at a number of different organisations, including film production, television production, film marketing, video games design and film festivals.

Affiliations

Society for Cinema and Media Studies (SCMS)

Society for Animation Studies (SAS)

Conference Presentations

‘Animating Awareness: Animated Documentary and Issues of Mental Health.’ Society for Cinema and Media Studies, New Orleans, 2011

‘The Power of the Disembodied Voice in Animated Interview Documentaries.’ Documentary Now, London, 2011

‘Inadequate Indexes: Epistemology and Medium-specificity in Animated Documentaries.’ Visible Evidence, Istanbul, 2010

‘Indexing a Dystopian Future in Metropia.’ Society for Animation Studies, Edinburgh, 2010

‘Animated Interviews.’ Visible Evidence, Los Angeles, 2009  

‘Trauma and Memory: Animating the Inexpressible.’ Society for Animation Studies, Atlanta, 2009

‘Absence and Excess: The Animation of Documentary.’ Visible Evidence, Lincoln, 2008

‘A Historical Perspective on the Convergence of Animation and Documentary. ’Society for Animation Studies, Bournemouth, 2008

‘Illustrated Knowledge: Epistemology and Evidence in Animated Documentary.’ Society for Cinema and Media Studies, Philadelphia, 2008

‘Transatlantic Cultural Exchange and British Film Policy: Warner Brothers Teddington and the American Production of British Quota Quickies. ’Screen, 2007

‘Denying the Index: Transgressive Forms of Documentary Film.’ Documentary Now, London, 2007

‘Denying the Index: New Forms of Documentary Film.’ Society for Cinema and Media Studies, Chicago, 2007

‘Outskirts of the Past: (De)constructing the Past in the Documentaries of Two British Filmmaking Collectives.’ Screen, 2006

‘Manchester, Music and Myth in 24 Hr Party People.’ Music and the Moving Image, University of California: Santa Barbara, 2006

‘Collectivity for the Community: The Documentary Films of the Amber Collective.’ Society for Cinema and Media Studies, London, 2005