Professor Chris Berry

PhD, UCLA; Theater Arts (Film & TV). 1999. Dissertation title: “Towards a Postsocialist Cinema: The Representation of the Cultural Revolution in the Cinema of the People’s Republic of China, 1976-1981.” Chair: N.K. Browne.

MA, UCLA; Theater Arts (Film & TV). 1983. Thesis title: “The Game Show and Its Commercials in the Viewing Continuum.” Chair: K. Montgomery.

BA (Hons), Leeds University; Chinese Studies. 1981.

Previously Professor of Film & Television Studies at Goldsmiths, University of London (2004-2012); Associate Professor in Film Studies at the University of California, Berkeley (2000-2004); Lecturer at La Trobe (1990-2000) and Griffith (1988-1989) universities in Australia; and consultant at the China Foreign Languages Press (1987-1988) and China Film Corporation in Beijing (1985-1987).

Visiting Professorships: University of Washington Chinese Film Summer School, held at the Beijing Film Academy (2006, 2007, 2008, 2011); University of Hong Kong (2007); Fudan University, Shanghai (2006); Chinese University of Hong Kong (2006, 2017); Shanghai Jiaotong University (2012); and Korean National University of the Arts (1997, 1999).

Senior Research Fellow at Internationales Forschungszentrum Kulturwissenschaften, Vienna (2011). 

Research Interests

• Chinese and East Asian cinema and screen cultures
• Screens and Public Space
• Gender, Sexuality and Cinema
• Documentary Film
• Theorizing Screen Studies
• Theories of National and Transnational Cinema

Chris would be interested in supervising PhD students working on any topics close to his own research. For more details please see his full research profile.

Teaching

Modules taught at King’s include: Authorship and Creativity in the Cinema; Cinema and Social Formations; Chinese Cinemas; and Film Festivals and Film Festival Studies.

Expertise and Public Engagement

Chris Berry co-edits two book series for Hong Kong University Press: TransAsian Screen Cultures and Queer Asia.

He has curated film seasons, working with Katja Wiederspahn on "A Single Spark Can Start a Prairie Fire: The Cultural Revolution in the Cinema" for the Film Archiv Austria in 2011, and working on the Chinese Visual Festival in London. He has also served on various film festival juries.

Chris has been interviewed widely on Chinese and Asian cinema and screen cultures by organizations including The New York Times, the BBC, The Korea Times, NHK Japan, Discovery Asia, CNN's Today programme, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, and Tehran TV Channels 1 and 2.