The Biopic in Contemporary Film Culture

The Biopic in Contemporary Film Culture (Routledge, AFI readers series, 2014) is a new collection of essays edited by Tom Brown and Belén Vidal, both faculty members in the Department of Film Studies at King's College London. In this collaborative project Brown and Vidal look at the phenomenon of the biographical film or biopic, a popular mode of filmmaking in all major film industries around the world which has nevertheless remained relatively unexplored in the field of Film Studies. Interrogating its generic, aesthetic, and cultural significance, this edited collection conceptualizes the biopic with a particular eye toward the "life" of the genre internationally. New theoretical approaches grouped around three areas - cultural shifts, cycles and performance, and icons and auteurs - bring together chapters on contemporary biographical film production in India, Italy,South Korea, France, Russia, Great Britain, and the US, in order to present a selective but well-rounded portrait of the biopic's place in film culture.  The collection is prefaced by an extended introduction that provides a road map to the biopic in relation to key critical contexts and histories, including its roots in classical cinema, the parallel lives of the biopic and the literary biography and its changing make-up in an era of media convergence. The body of the collection discusses the biopic's grounding in the conventions of the historical film, and explores its defining traits as well as its potential for innovation.

To mark the occasion of this 2014 publication, a book launch took place on 19 March at King's College London. Alongside the editors, Film Studies scholars and contributors Pam Cook, Lucy Fife Donaldson, Rachel Dwyer and GinetteVincendeau (also a member of the Film Studies Department at King's) presented their different takes on the biopic and engaged in a lively round table about the significance of this film genre at the turn of the 21st century.

There is also a podcast available with the Pod Academy’s film specialist, Esther Gaytan Fuertes, talking to Dr Tom Brown and Dr Belen Vidal. Link: http://podacademy.org/podcasts/biopic-contemporary-film-culture/