Belén Vidal is Reader in Film Studies. She is the author of Figuring the Past: Period Film and the Mannerist Aesthetic (Amsterdam University Press, 2012) and Heritage Film. Nation, Genre and Representation (Columbia University Press/Wallflower Press, 2012). She is the co-editor of The Biopic in Contemporary Film Culture (AFI Film Readers, Routledge 2014) and of Cinema at the Periphery (Wayne State University Press, 2010). She co-leads the international research project AGE-C. Ageing and Gender in European Cinema, funded by VolkswagenStiftung (2023-2026).

She holds a PhD in Film Studies from Glasgow University, an MA from Georgetown University and a BA (Honors) from the University of Valencia. Before joining King’s in 2008, she was Lecturer in Film Studies at the University of St Andrews.

Research Interests 

• History and memory in contemporary cinemas
• The biopic and related forms of screen biography
• Spanish film history, and contemporary cinema & media in Spain
• Cinephilia and film cultures
• Ageing and gender in European cinema

Belén Vidal’s research focuses on the representation of history and memory in contemporary film and media, with a comparative focus on Western European cinemas. She writes on the biopic through questions of genre and screen performance.

Belén has extensively taught and published on Spanish cinema, particularly on new modes of cinema after the 2008 economic crisis.  She combines her research on AGE-C with a monograph on cinephilia, film historiography and ephemeral film cultures in Spain (funded by a Leverhulme Research Fellowship in 2019-2020).

She participated in the research networks:

• ‘Cartografías del cine de movilidad en el Atlántico Hispánico’. Associated researcher.
• ‘Producing the Post-National Popular: The Expanding Imagination of Mainstream French Films and Television Series’ (AHRC international network). Member of steering committee.
• ‘Cartografías del cine de movilidad en el Atlántico Hispánico’. Associated researcher.

PhD Supervision

Belén currently supervises PhD projects on migration and inclusive screen cultures, performance, stardom and ageing in the heritage film, and masculinity in the war film. She welcomes proposals for doctoral projects in the areas of:

• history and memory in European cinema and television
• the historical film genres, particularly the biopic
• Spanish cinema
• theories and cultures of cinephilia
• ageing in film and media

For more details, please see her full research profile.

Teaching

She teaches specialist courses on history and memory in film; the biopic; popular European cinemas in the mid-20th century; contemporary Spanish cinema; the French New Wave at graduate and undergraduate level.

Expertise and Public Engagement

• Collaborations with the BFI Southbank 
• Editorial Advisory Board, Screen
• Peer reviewer for journals such as Necsus. European Journal of Media Studies, Film Quarterly, Journal of British Cinema and Television, Studies in European Cinema, Hispanic Research Journal, In[Transition]
• Dr Vidal has commented on the uses of history and memory in popular media for international media outlets such as the BBC. She also collaborates with the academic blog Mediático on Spanish and Latin American media topics. She is a regular attendee at the San Sebastian International Film Festival. She was a guest speaker on scientist biopics at AFO - 59th International Festival of Science Documentary Films in Olomouc, Czechia.