Dr Valentina Ippolito

I am a Senior Lecturer in Filmmaking at Kingston University and L4 Year Leader on the BA (Hons) Filmmaking degree. I have taught in leading film production and film studies programmes, convening and designing modules in areas such as film production and direction, film aesthetics, national cinemas, digital technologies and industry study. I have extensive teaching experience at the University of Bristol, the University of Oxford, Middlesex University London and Birmingham City University. As part of this experience, I have designed and convened Undergraduate and Postgraduate modules, delivered seminars and tutorials, given large group lectures, and supervised research projects.

Over the past three years at Kingston University, I have delivered a series of one-day film challenges on climate change, designed to prompt creative engagement with urgent environmental themes. Student films have been featured across the University and at London Climate Action Week. The one-day filmmaking challenge was also offered as part of the BAFTA Albert education partnership.

Qualifications

• HE Fellow

Courses taught

• Filmmaking BA (Hons)
• Film Making MA

A commitment to social justice, equality, and the visibility of minority groups underpins my research. Through exhibiting my films and photographic work internationally, collaborating with community groups, and developing links with global organisations and charities, my work is concerned with making a significant social impact.

My academic research focuses on the cinematic representation of the migrant journey. Most recently, I directed 1001 Days (2025), a documentary made in collaboration with an Afghan refugee and journalist. Employing mobile phone footage, social media filters, and reconstruction, the film offers a dialogic account of displacement and digital self-representation. 

In 2023, I published Migranti alla regia / Migrant Filmmakers, part of the Rapporto Immigrazione (Caritas and Migrantes), examining the emergence of migrant filmmaking in contemporary Italian cinema. The piece considers how migrant filmmakers in Italy are reshaping national narratives through self-representation, challenging reductive and stereotypical portrayals of migration. Drawing on recent examples, I reflect on the tensions between women's self-representation and existing narratives, and the ways in which film becomes a space for reclaiming narrative agency within a complex sociopolitical landscape.

In 2022, my article Vesna va veloce: resistenza attraverso realtà e fantasia / Vesna goes fast: resistance through reality and fantasy examined the interplay of resistance and fantasy in cinematic portrayals of Eastern European migrant women. 

The role of imagination is also present in my monograph The Dialogical Gaze: The Migratory Journey to Italy in Contemporary Italian and Romanian Cinema (2021). The study identifies a distinct cinematic paradigm for representing transnational displacement and resettlement. The book includes interviews with contemporary Italian and Romanian filmmakers, archival research at the Romanian National Film Archive, and close film analyses.

In 2019, I published Io Rom romantica: The Discovery of the True Self in Laura Halilovic’s Accented Cinema. The paper examines the modes of representation employed by Romani filmmaker Laura Halilovic in her film Io Rom romantica/ Me Romantic Romani (2014) a comedy about an emerging Romani filmmaker searching for her true identity in a society that constantly rejects migrants. 

My earlier work includes the Journey Through Imagination: Francesca (2018) an analysis of Romanian New Wave cinema that explored imagination as a critical mode through which migratory experience and cultural belonging are negotiated. Across these texts, I have investigated how cinema reframes dominant narratives around migration and identity in contemporary European cinema.

My practice-as-research has also been engaged with social identities at the margin and minority communities. My photographic work shot in India has  received international recognition, including the ‘Urban Award’ at the Still Awards (Ireland, 2020) and ‘Best International Documentary Photograph’ at the Melbourne Documentary Film Festival (2019). My photograph Red Wind (2018), portraying a mother carrying her sleeping child through the backstreets of Jodhpur, forms part of Boundaries: A Stranger’s Journey across Nepal and India, a transnational documentary project examining the notion of borders through the intimate encounter between local inhabitants and the travelling filmmaker.

Qualifications

• Research Team Leadership (Advance HE)

Specialisms

• Documentary Filmmaking
• Cinema of Migration
• Film Directing

Scholarly affiliations

• Pembroke College, University of Oxford

In 2023, I published a body of photographic work representing migration to Italy, featured in Migranti alla regia / Migrant Filmmakers, part of the XXXII Caritas and Migrantes Migration Report (Rapporto Immigrazione 2023).

This work builds on earlier research presented in my book The Dialogical Gaze: The Migratory Journey to Italy in Contemporary Italian and Romanian Cinema. The book launch was held in November 2021 at the Milan Culture Hall (Salone della Cultura), under the patronage of the General Consulate of Romania in Milan, the Romanian Cultural Institute in Venice, and the Italian–Romanian Cultural Horizons Association (Orizonturi Culturale Italo-Romane).

The emphasis on dialogism has been a recurring framework in my projects. This method is evident in Romanians of New York (United States, 2017), a documentary film sponsored by the Santander Travel Prize (University of Oxford) and Middlesex University.

In 2016, I directed The Last Warriors (China, 2016), a multidisciplinary film project examining the gendering of Miao warrior culture throughout the circle of life. The project was jointly funded by Beijing Normal University and the Academy for the International Communication of Chinese Culture, in collaboration with Oxford Prospects Programmes.

In 2014, I founded and curated the Pembroke Film Masterclass Series at the University of Oxford. Sponsored by Pembroke College’s Annual Fund and Dean of Graduates Fund, the series featured guest speakers including Amanda Nevill (Chief Executive, British Film Institute) and legendary documentary filmmaker Nick Broomfield. The series marked a significant initiative for Pembroke College, positioning the college as an active site for dialogue between creative practice and film scholarship.

As a result of the Pembroke Film Masterclass Series, I was featured in the Pembroke College Oxford 400 Characters digital gallery, which celebrates individuals who have contributed to the college community and wider world, during Pembroke’s first four centuries at the University of Oxford.

• Deputy Director for the Centre for Practice Research in the Arts, Kingston University
• Level 4 Year Leader; Module Leader for Voices (L4) and Professional Project (L6)
• Academic Peer Mentoring Champion (2022-2025)
• Deputy Leader, Looking China: Charm, Ethnography, Culture, Guizhou, China. Sponsored by Beijing Normal University and the Academy for the International Communication of Chinese Culture.