Elena Gorfinkel is Reader in Film Studies at King’s College London. Her research and publications focus broadly on independent and underground cinemas, including experimental and adult film, women’s filmmaking practices and queer histories, and theories of embodiment, materiality, and duration.

She is the author of Lewd Looks: American Sexploitation Cinema in the 1960s (University of Minnesota Press, 2017), Wanda (BFI Film Classics/Bloomsbury, 2025) and The Prop (with John David Rhodes, Fordham University Press, 2025), and co-editor of the volumes Global Cinema Networks (Rutgers, 2018) and Taking Place: Location and the Moving Image (Minnesota, 2011). Her articles have been published in peer reviewed journals including JCMS, Screen, Camera Obscura, Jump Cut, Framework, Porn Studies, and numerous edited collections. Gorfinkel was the recipient of a 2018 Andy Warhol Foundation Arts Writers Grant for her book project on “cinemas of exhaustion.”

In addition to her scholarly work, Gorfinkel writes criticism and curates film programs, including: "Wanda & Beyond: The World of Barbara Loden" at BFI Southbank and Anthology Film Archives (2025), “Grandma’s Grammar” at Open City Documentary Film Festival (2024), as well as the first UK retrospective of Kira Muratova at Berwick Film & Media Arts Festival (2019).

Prior to arriving at King’s in 2017, she was Associate Professor of Art History & Film Studies at University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, where she taught from 2009-2016. She holds a PhD and MA from the Department of Cinema Studies at New York University.

Research interests and PhD supervision

• Independent, underground, experimental, and adult film
• Women’s filmmaking and feminist/queer histories
• American film history and historiography
• Sexuality and embodiment, performance and labour
• Global art cinemas and cinephilias

Teaching

Gorfinkel teaches on the subjects of independent cinemas, women’s filmmaking, carnal cinemas, and film history and theory.

Expertise and public engagement 

Gorfinkel has given keynote and invited lectures internationally, including at the Kracauer Lecture at Goethe University, Cinepoetics Lecture at Frei Universiteit Berlin – Arsenal Archive, Yale University, University of Chicago, University of Cambridge, and the UCLA Film Archive. She has presented talks and held conversations with filmmakers at the BFI, ICA London, Barbican, Tate Modern, LUX, Close-Up, Light Industry, and other film and art venues.

Gorfinkel serves on the editorial and advisory boards of several academic journals, including Camera Obscura, World Picture, Porn Studies, ASAP Journal, and several book series. From 2017-2020 she was the co-chair of the Adult Film & Media History Special Interest Group of the Society of Cinema and Media Studies.

Gorfinkel is a member of the London Film Critics Circle, and her criticism has appeared in venues such as The Metrograph, Sight & Sound, Criterion, Art Monthly, Film Quarterly, Another Gaze, and Sabzian. She has written liner essays and given interviews for film distributors such as Criterion Collection, Radiance, Arbelos, Second Run and Studio Canal. She has also served on several film festival juries, including Documenta Madrid and Open City Documentary Film Festival.

Selected publications

• Wanda. London: BFI Film Classics/ Bloomsbury. 2025.
• The Prop (with John David Rhodes). New York: Cutaways/Fordham University Press, 2025.
• "Cinema of the Grandmother," in Erika Balsom and Hila Peleg, eds. Feminist Worldmaking and the Moving Image. London: MIT Press, 2022.
• "Wanda's Slowness: Enduring Insignificance," in Ivone Margulies & Jeremi Szaniawski, eds. On Women’s Films: Across Worlds and Generations. London: Bloomsbury, 2019. 27-48.1 
• Lewd Looks: American Sexploitation Cinema in the 1960s, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2017.