Screen Internationalism

This group provides a forum to explore the links between screen media and ideas about global culture and politics during the world-building process following World War Two.

The Screen Internationalism group was established in 2024 as a focal point for emerging scholarship on the role of cinema and other screen media in constructing and circulating competing notions of the global and the international. We look at the use of film and audiovisual media by international organisations during the decades following World War Two, particularly in the areas of the world variously referred to as “underdeveloped”, “peripheral” “the Third Word” or “the Global South” against the complex geopolitical backdrop of the Cold War, revolutionary processes and decolonisation.

The group seeks to establish a research agenda for the contemporary study of the “substandard”, “useful” or otherwise “neglected” media in the context of the international system. Theoretical and methodological areas of interest include feminist historiography, the study of racism in audiovisual media, media archaeology, the archive, film heritage, and contemporary practices of exhibition and creative re-use. We seek to develop closer collaborations between film and media scholars and archivists.

We meet online once every two months. Meetings involve developing collective research agendas, discussing existing work in the field, presenting work in progress and research materials, and evaluating the future production of collective research outputs.

The group welcomes scholars, archivists and artists interested in these topics. To take part, please contact the group convenor: David Wood (david.mj.wood@ucl.ac.uk).

Work presented in 2024-2025 includes:

Suzanne Langlois (York University) on the use of filmstrips by the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration (UNRRA) in the 1940s.
Paolo Tosini (Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia) and David Wood (University College London) on collaborative archival/academic research methodologies and unfinished UNESCO films in 1950s Latin America.
Rielle Navitski (University of Georgia) on Enrico Fulchignoni, Radio Sutatenza and UNESCO’s cultural projects in 1950s Colombia.
Alice Lovejoy (University of Minnesota) and Mariano Mestman (University of Buenos Aires/CONICET) on the postwar international documentary organizations the World Union of Documentary (1947-1950) and the Association Internationale des Documentaristes (1964-1999) and their relationships with UNESCO.

This project is supported by the UKRI.