Dr Oscar Vinter

• PhD in Film Studies Audio-Visual, The University of Birmingham, 2024
• MA in Comparative Literature, Goldsmiths College, The University of London, 2015
• BA in English Literature and Creative Writing, The University of Westminster, 2014

I have taught at The University of Warwick, delivering the film component of the first-year core module, ‘Film and Television Criticism’ and the third-year module, ‘The Practice of Film Criticism’, which drew on my specialism in video-essay and practice-based research. This intensive and practical module focused on the creation of film criticism in mediums including: the video-essay, podcasts, interviews and articles. My video-essays have been recognised by BFI’s Sight & Sound and nominated for Learning on Screen Awards and have been published in [In] Transition. 

At Birmingham, I have previously co-delivered the undergraduate module ‘Film Genre’ and the Postgraduate modules, ‘Documentary Filmmaking’ and ‘Research Skills in Film and Television.’ As the co-research assistant for B-Film, I co-created, organised and chaired the 2022 conference Cinema in the Margins: On the Edges and Borders with Ella Wright, which championed marginalised voices and experimental forms of film research. The symposium offered a platform for scholarship and practice-led research on feminist, queer, Black, disability centered and transnational film.  

I am a member of BAFTSS (British Association of Film, Television and Screen Studies) and MeCCSA (Media, Communication and Cultural Studies Association). From 2020-2022 I was the Book Review Editor, and towards the end of my tenure, the Creative Editor for Ad Alta: the Birmingham Journal of Literature. 

As a neuroqueer researcher and filmmaker of colour, I am interested in exploring the intersections of disabled subjectivities, as well as disabled, queer and Black cinema. I compose music and sound design for film and artist moving image work which have been shown at institutions including the London Southbank Centre and Birmingham Museum and Art Galleries. In 2023, I was commissioned by Outside In in association with Arts Council England and the Paul Hamlyn Foundation to create the film Dance the Body Electric, which explored movement, the body, autistic stimming and the role of sound and affect. A collaborative poetry and photography pamphlet with the artist Charlie Fitz, will be published by Photoworks and Jane & Jeremy in Spring 2026.  

• American and World Cinema
• Film Theory and Criticism
• Discovering Creative Practice

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Find out more - our PhD Creative Writing  page has information about doctoral research at the University of Birmingham.

My practice-led doctoral research, ‘Inhuman, all too Inhuman: Lyotard, Nihilism and Film’ developed Jean-François Lyotard’s thinking, namely his notions of the inhuman, acinemas and the libidinal within the realm of film through an audio-visual methodology which included a portfolio of experimental films and video-essays they created. This research was supervised by Associate Professor in Film, Dr Richard Langley and Emeritus Professor, Dr. Rob Stone. This work aimed to deterritorialize the boundaries of creative practice, philosophy, film and academic research. Importantly, this research is soon to be published as a monograph. As well as film-philosophy, they have a particular interest in experimental cinema, sound and critical theory.   

In 2015 I completed an MA in Comparative Literature at Goldsmiths College, the University of London, with a particular focus on the relationship between literature, art, aesthetics and the problematics of representation in the work of Theodor Adorno, Walter Benjamin and Maurice Blanchot. This culminated in my dissertation; 'Utopia in fragments: Art and Adorno's Negative Dialectics after Shoah' supervised by the psychoanalyst and Emeritus Professor, Josh Cohen. This research explored Adorno's philosophy in relation to the work of Anselm Kiefer and Andrei Tarkovsky.  

I am currently developing an audio-visual research project, ‘Cinema Orpheus’, which explores modernist and contemporary filmic engagements with the Orphic myth from Jean Cocteau, Marcel Camus to Celine Sciamma and beyond.   

Explore more of my work at: www.oscarvinter.com