Dr Nicolas Helm-Grovas

Nicolas Helm-Grovas completed his PhD at Royal Holloway, University of London, in 2018, writing a thesis on the films and writings of Laura Mulvey and Peter Wollen, which is currently being revised into a book manuscript for Brill’s Historical Materialism book series. Afterwards he taught in Film Studies at King's for two years, followed by two years teaching across departments of film, art and media in London and the South East, a period in which he also held fellowships from the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art and UCL Institute of Advanced Studies. He returned to King's in 2023-24.

His writing has appeared in publications such as Radical Philosophy, Oxford Art Journal, Trafic: Almanach de cinéma, New Left Review: Sidecar and Moving Image Review and Art Journal, and in various books. In 2018 he was Jerwood Arts Writer in Residence. With Oliver Fuke he has co-curated the interrelated exhibitions ‘Art at the Frontier of Film Theory’ (Peltz Gallery, Birkbeck, London, 2019), ‘A is for Avant-Garde, Z is for Zero’ (Cooper Gallery, Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art and Design, Dundee, 2020), and ‘Intersections in Theory, Film and Art’ (Camera Austria, Graz, 2022).

Research interests and PhD supervision

• Film theory and critical theory Experimental/avant-garde film and video radical cinema
• Contemporary artists’ moving image
• Contemporary art more broadly Documentary

Nicolas’s research looks at histories of radical cinema, film theory, experimental film and video, and contemporary art. A particular interest is the interaction and slippage between theoretical discourse and artistic/cinematic production. This has been investigated through symptomatic categories like pedagogy, labour, metalanguage and interpellation. His research draws on the resources of Marxism, psychoanalysis, feminism and semiotics, critically engaging with the tradition of post-1968 film theory; it has looked at filmmakers and writers such as Laura Mulvey and Peter Wollen, Danièle Huillet and Jean-Marie Straub, the Dziga Vertov Group, Louis Althusser, and Lucy Lippard, and at the history of the British experimental film magazine Afterimage. As well as the publications listed below, he is currently co-editing a collection of writings by Peter Wollen. Also important are curatorial projects, and engagements with current artistic practice, such as a recent collaboration with the artist Anneke Kampman.

Teaching

At King's Nicolas has taught modules on documentary, classical and modern film theory, global cinema and film history.

Expertise and public engagement

Nicolas has given papers and been on panels at institutions such as the British Film Institute, the Institute of Contemporary Arts, Whitechapel Gallery, Marxism in Culture, Historical Materialism, Screen Studies Conference, and NTU Centre for Contemporary Art Singapore.

Selected publications

Laura Mulvey and Peter Wollen: Towards Counter-cinema (Leiden: Brill, forthcoming). ‘“Nor Do I Seek Out Difficult Postures”: Huillet’s and Straub’s Intellectuals’, in Martin Brady and Helen Hughes (eds.)

The Cinema of Danièle Huillet and Jean-Marie Straub (Cambridge: Legenda, 2023). ‘Scorch the Earth, Start from Zero: Penthesilea, Queen of the Amazons’, in Oliver Fuke (ed.)

The Films of Laura Mulvey and Peter Wollen: Scripts, Working Documents, Interpretation (London: BFI, 2023). ‘Passionate Detachment’, Oxford Art Journal, 44:1 (Spring, 2021), pp. 47-66.

‘The Trajectory of Afterimage’, Moving Image Review & Art Journal (MIRAJ), 6:1-2 (2017), pp. 103-116.