Rob Stone is Professor of Film Studies at the University of Birmingham in the UK. His research interests cover European and American independent cinema with particular emphasis on the relations between aesthetics, politics and philosophy. He is a filmmaker and video essayist too.

 

Rob is the author of Spanish Cinema (2001), Flamenco in the Works of Federico García Lorca and Carlos Saura (2004), Julio Medem (2007), The Cinema of Richard Linklater: Walk, Don’t Run (2013; 2nd edn. 2018) and Lady Bird: Self-Determination for a New Century (2022) and co-author of Basque Cinema: A Cultural and Political History (2015) and Cine Vasco (2013). He also co-edited The Unsilvered Screen: Surrealism on Film (2007), Screening Songs in Hispanic and Lusophone Cinema (2012), A Companion to Luis Buñuel (2013), Screening European Heritage (2016), The Routledge Companion to World Cinema (2017; 2nd edn. 2027), Sense8: Transcending Television (2018) and Sex Education: School's Out for Netflix (2025).

 

He is currently researching and writing a revisionist account of recent and contemporary American independent cinema entitled Imagined Life: American Independent Cinema and Transcendentalism to be published by Edinburgh University Press in 2027. This website will host the eight video essays that complement the book's eight chapters. It will also host associated writing and videographic criticism on American independent cinema including his work on the cinema of Richard Linklater and Greta Gerwig's 2017 film Lady Bird.