Dr. Luis Freijo
Dr. Luis Freijo
King’s College London, United Kingdom
About me
I have joined the Department of Film Studies at King’s College London in 2023 to work as a Research Associate on the project AGE-C: Ageing and Gender in European Cinema. I previously worked at the University of Liverpool as a University Teacher (2022-2023). I studied Journalism and Audiovisual Communication in Universidad Rey Juan Carlos from Madrid (2011-2016) and, after working for two years for the television network Telecinco, I rejoined the academic world in 2017 with a MA by Research in Film Studies at the University of Birmingham. I followed up that MA with the PhD thesis “De-Westernising the Western: Remapping Genre and Nation in World Cinema” at the University of Birmingham (2018-2022), where I focused on the dynamics of World Cinema and film genre studies, specifically the global film Western. During those years at Birmingham I also taught at Undergraduate level in the Department of Film and Creative Writing and I served for two years as Research Assistant of the research centre B-Film: The Birmingham Centre for Film and Television Studies. My work for AGE-C brings together my interest in transnational dynamics and genre theory with the industry experience that I acquired working in national television.
https://www.kcl.ac.uk/people/luis-freijo
Contact
Email: luis.freijo[at]kcl.ac.uk
Research Interests
Transnational cinema, World Cinema, European Cinema, gender and film, film genre, cinema and nation, the global film Western, stardom, ageing and film, Spanish television, film aesthetics, film politics
Publications
Freijo, L. (2023) ‘Tabula rasa: the Western under erasure in The Rider and Jauja’, Transnational Screens, vol. 14 (1), pp. 64-80. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/25785273.2023.2185381.
Stone, R. & L. Freijo (2021) ‘World Cinema between the rock of the unknowable and the hard place of the as yet unknown’, Transnational Screens, 12 (1), pp. 1-22. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/25785273.2021.1873572.
Freijo, L. (2022) ‘”No One to Call Around Here. These Boys Is On Their Own”: The Post-Industrial Frontier in Hell or High Water and the Western as a Landscape of Crisis’, in Tarancón, J. and H. Loyo (2022) Screening the Crisis: U.S. Cinema and Social Change in the 21st Century. London: Bloomsbury, pp. 265-278.
Freijo, L. (2022) ‘Two Speed Economic Systems and Bi-Polarity in the European Union: Frontier Spaces in Valeska Grisebach’s Western’, in Hayward, S. and G. Gergely (eds.) (2021) The Routledge Companion to European Cinema. London and New York: Routledge, pp. 335-344.
Freijo, L. (2021) ‘Sense8 and the City: Frontier Cosmopolitanism’, in Shaw, D. and R. Stone (eds) (2021) Sense8: Transcending Television. London: Bloomsbury, pp. 133-148.
Freijo, L. (2021) ‘Héroes Cansados, Familias Extrañas: Dibujando la masculinidad post-industrial en Old Man Logan’, in Gracia Lana, J., A. Asión Suñer and L. Ruiz Cantera (eds.) (2020) Dibujando historias. El cómic más allá de la imagen. Zaragoza: Prensas de la Universidad de Zaragoza, pp. 463-468.
Activities
Writer of general audience film books, Notorious Ediciones, Spain.
Co-organiser, Screening Spaces of Youth Conference series.
Volunteer, Retirement Home “Campiña de Viñuelas”, Spain.
My AGE-C story
I grew up in the province of Guadalajara, in Spain, in an area in the centre of the country that has come to be known as the “emptied Spain”. Coming from that region, I have always been aware of the challenges posed by an ageing population which demand rethinking what the terms “ageing”, “wellbeing” and “active life” mean. I have volunteered regularly in the organisation of cultural activities in a local retirement home to contribute to such notions of wellbeing and later life activity. On the other hand, through my work as a journalist in the television show Qué tiempo tan feliz, in Telecinco, I became very interested in Spanish popular culture of the last third of the twentieth century. Its main protagonists are now ageing artists who are still negotiating their position within the public sphere. By taking part in AGE-C, I hope to bring the skills and training in film analysis and film philosophy to the study of these issues and to contribute to the advancement of public debate and policy on ageing through film.