Pioneering Feminist Film Theorist Laura Mulvey Awarded BFI Fellowship

In a significant recognition of her pioneering contributions to film theory and scholarship, renowned academic Laura Mulvey will be awarded the prestigious BFI Fellowship in November 2025. Mulvey, who is currently an Honorary Professor of Film at the University of St Andrews and Emerita Professor of Film and Media Studies at Birkbeck College, University of London, is best known for her seminal 1975 essay "Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema."

The essay, which will celebrate its 50th anniversary in 2025, is widely regarded as one of the most influential pieces of writing on cinema. It popularized the concept of the "male gaze," highlighting classical Hollywood cinema's tendency to address, embody, and shape film spectators as heterosexual and male. Mulvey's groundbreaking work has had a lasting impact on feminist film theory and continues to be studied in classrooms around the world.

To mark this milestone, the BFI Southbank will host a retrospective of Mulvey's work throughout November and December 2025, titled "Laura Mulvey: Thinking Through Film." The event will provide audiences with the opportunity to engage with Mulvey's diverse body of work, which includes her BFI Film Classic on Citizen Kane, as well as her other acclaimed publications, such as Fetishism and Curiosity, Visual and Other Pleasures, and Afterimages: On Cinema, Women and Changing Times.