Alexander Fisher

My primary research activities explore the political dimensions of sound and music in international film, with a particular focus on sub-Saharan African cinemas. I am also interested in the aesthetic, cultural and political aspects of ‘world cinema’, and I am currently researching recent transformations in international film distribution and culture. My broader interests include postcolonialism and film, Third Cinema, diasporic cinemas, the national/trans-national, and authorship. Additionally, I am always interested in projects that investigate how cross-cultural and/or cross-disciplinary readings of cinema may inform established debates in film studies.

• External Examiner, BA Film, Trinity College Dublin (2024-present)
• AHRC Research Network Grant - two-year project ‘World Cinema On Demand’ (2012-1014)
• External Examiner, BA English and Media Writing, Southampton Solent University (2007-2011)
• Formerly Subject Lead for Film (3 years, 2011-2014)

Sound and music in world film (esp. their political dimensions); sub-Saharan African cinema; cinema in postcolonial contexts; national cinemas (esp. outside Europe and North America); Third Cinema; online distribution of world cinemas.

Selected publications

'Streaming the transmedial and transcultural: contemporary African cinemas and the Netflix viewing environment' in Jaising, S. & Gharabaghi, H. (eds.). Streaming in the Global South, (London and New York: Bloomsbury Academic), forthcoming 2025.

'Netflix and Africa: Streaming, Branding and Tastemaking in Non-domestic African Film Markets' in S. Baschiera and A. Fisher (eds), World Cinema On Demand: Global Film Cultures in the Era of Online Distribution,  (London and New York: Bloomsbury Academic), 2022, pp. 187-282.

World Cinema On Demand: Global Film Cultures in the Era of Online Distribution (co-edited with Stefano Baschiera). (London and New York: Bloomsbury Academic), 2022.

‘Reclaiming Josephine Baker in the Filmic Ethnomusicology of Djibril Diop Mambéty’, Music and the Moving Image, 12:2, July 2019, pp. 3-19.

‘African Cinema On Demand? The Politics of Online Distribution and the Case of the African Film Library’, The Journal of African Media Studies, 10(3), Sept. 2018, pp. 239-250.

‘Vocal Spaces and Oral Traces: Voice-Over, Orality and Ousmane Sembene’s Early Postcolonial Critique’ in Tom Whittaker and Sarah Wright (eds.), Locating the Voice in Film (London: Oxford University Press), 2016, pp. 209-225.

'Ousmane Sembene: An Aesthetic Appreciation in the Light of HD', Viewfinder 104, 2016.

‘Modes of Griot Inscription in African Cinema’, The Journal of African Media Studies, 8:1, Sept. 2016, pp. 5-16.

‘Scoring African Cinema’ in Blandine Stefanson and Sheila Petty (eds.), The Directory of World Cinema: Africa (Bristol: Intellect), 2015) pp. 41-46.

‘Aristotle’s Plot: A Refusal to “Find” African Cinema?’ in David Murphy and Lizelle Bisschoff (eds.) Africa’s Lost Classics: New Histories of African Cinema (Oxford: Legenda), 2014, pp. 139-145.

‘Between “the Housewife” and the “Philosophy Professor”: Music, Narration, and Address in Ousmane Sembene’s Xala’, Visual Anthropology, 24:4, July-Sept. 2011, pp. 306-317.

‘Funding, Ideology, and the Aesthetics of the “Development Film” in Postcolonial Zimbabwe’, The Journal of African Cinemas, 2:2, Winter 2010, pp. 111-120.

‘Med Hondo’s Sarraounia: The Musical Articulation of Cultural Transformation’, Music, Sound, and the Moving Image, 3:2, Autumn 2009, pp. 195-213.