Saige Walton

Teaching Strengths

Film History (Hollywood and Non-Hollywood)
Histories of Film Theory
Film and Art
Genre Studies
Screen aesthetics

Dr Saige Walton

Research Degree Coordinator

School of Communication, Media and Journalism

College of Creative Arts, Design and Humanities

Available For Media Comment.


Saige Walton is a Senior Lecturer in Screen Studies and one of the Associate Directors of the Creative People, Products and Places (CP3) research centre, based in UniSA Creative.  She also serves as a Research Degree Coordinator.
She is a film and visual culture studies scholar who works in American, European and World Cinema contexts. She is particularly interested in issues relating to screen aesthetics and the body, often using phenomenological philosophy as well as other film-philosophical frameworks to make 'sense' of the cinema. She also teaches and conducts research in areas relating to popular film genres, horror, experimental film/media, art and inter-mediality.
Saige's first scholarly monograph - Cinema's Baroque Flesh: Film, Phenomenology and the Art of Entanglement - was published by Amsterdam University Press in 2016 (reviewed in Film-Philosophy; reviewed in Screening the Past; reviewed in Alphaville).  In this book, she explores the parallels between philosopher Maurice Merleau-Ponty's thought, film-phenomenology and the baroque, establishing the baroque as its own distinct cinema of the senses.  You can access a PDF of the Introduction here: Cinema's Baroque Flesh.
Building on her interest in film and the body, she has edited two special journal issues relating to these topics: "Materialising Absence in Film and Media" (with Nadine Boljkovac), published in Screening the Past (Issue 43 2018) and a special issue of Alphaville: Journal of Film and Screen Media on "Screening the Artist" (co-edited with Lucio Crispino) which featured a number of leading international film/media and film-philosophy scholars (Issue 23 2022).  You can read the Introduction and access the entire issue here: "Screening the Artist" Alphaville Special Issue.
Saige's second monograph in process explores the embodiment and ethics of a contemporary cinema of poetry.  Publications arising from Saige's work on film and the poetic have appeared in leading international film and critical theory journals such as Film-Philosophy, Paragraph and Projections. 
Saige serves as peer reviewer for a wide range of journals and publication houses such as Bloosmbury Publishing, NECSUS: European Journal of Media Studies, Third Text, Film-Philosophy, French Screen Studies, the New Review of Film and Television Studies, Senses of Cinema and Screening the Past, among others.  She is a member of the International Advisory Board for Alphaville: Journal of Film and Screen Media.
Prior to joining the University of South Australia in 2012, Saige taught screen, media and cultural studies subjects at the University of Melbourne, Australia.  She is also a former Assistant Curator of Exhibitions with the Australian Centre for the Moving Image (ACMI) in Melbourne who has helped to curate a number of film programs, exhibitions, screen and art related events for the general public.  In 2023, she collaborated with the Adelaide Film Festival to deliver the "Screen Conversations" series of talks with Australian filmmakers.

  • screen aesthetics and visual culture
  • film-philosophy and histories of film theory
  • film and the body
  • screen genres
  • horror studies
  • global art cinemas (especially contemporary French and European cinemas)
  • moving image art and experimental film

Date Position Institution name
2012 - ongoing Senior Lecturer: Screen Studies University of South Australia

Date Institution name Country Title
2005 - 2009 University of Melbourne Australia Doctor of Philosophy

Year Citation
2023 Walton, S. (2023). Poetic objects: Bachelardian reverie, reverberation and repose in Claire Denis' 35 Shots of Rum. Film-Philosophy, 27(1), 7-28.
DOI
2023 Walton, S. (2023). Imagining the elements with Gaston Bachelard and Claire Denis: 'weighted' images, drift and diffusion in l'Intrus/the intruder. Studies in World Cinema, 3(2), 200-219.
DOI
2022 Walton, S. (2022). Hands in the machine: Maya Deren and Marie Menken's manual gestures. Alphaville: Journal of Film and Screen Media, (23), 32-51.
DOI
2022 Walton, S., & Crispino, L. (2022). Screening the artist: between presence/absence, immediacy/mediation. Alphaville: Journal of Film and Screen Media, (23), 1-9.
DOI
2020 Walton, S. (2020). Sleeping away the factory, healing with time: Gaston Bachelard, the poetic imagination and testről és lélekről/ on body and soul (2017). Paragraph, 43(3), 348-363.
DOI
2019 Walton, S. (2019). Loving and grieving with Heart of a Dog and Merleau-Ponty's depth. Projections: the journal for movies and mind, 13(2), 38-57.
DOI
2018 Walton, S. (2018). Air, atmosphere, environment: film mood, folk horror and The VVitch. Screening the past, (43), 1-24.
2018 Walton, S., & Boljkovac, N. (2018). Introduction: materialising absence. Screening the past, (43), 1-6.
2018 Walton, S. (2018). Cruising the unknown: film as rhythm and embodied apprehension in L'Inconnu du lac/Stranger by the Lake (2013). New review of film and television studies, 16(3), 238-263.
DOI
2017 Walton, S. (2017). Becoming space in every direction: birdman as post-cinematic baroque. Cinéma & cie: international film studies journal, 16(26-27), 65-75.
2016 Walton, S. (2016). 'Folds in the soul': Deleuze's baroque, Wölfflin and Grandrieux's Un Lac (2008). Culture, Theory and Critique, 57(2), 197-214.
DOI
2016 Walton, S. (2016). Affective forces and folds of night: Les Salauds/Bastards (2013) as baroque dark matter. The Cine-Files, 10(Spring), 1-25.
2015 Walton, S. (2015). Film and/as devotion: Bruno Dumont's enworlded cinema. Australian journal of French studies, 52(2), 188-203.
DOI
2014 Walton, S. (2014). The Beauty of the Act: Figuring Film and the Delirious Baroque in 'Holy Motors'. NECSUS, 3(1), 245-265.
2013 Walton, S. (2013). Enfolding surfaces, spaces and materials: Claire Denis' Neo-Baroque textures of sensation. Screening the past, 37(online).
2012 Walton, S. (2012). Gestures of intimacy: Claire Denis' I Can't Sleep. Senses of Cinema, online(63).

Year Citation
2025 Walton, S. (2025). Imagining the Elements with Gaston Bachelard and Claire Denis: 'Weighted' Images, Drift and Diffusion in L'Intrus/The Intruder. In T. Mroz (Ed.), Source details - Title: Elemental World Cinema: Cinematic Entanglements of Earth, Fire, Water and Air (pp. 157-176). Netherlands: Brill.
DOI
2024 Walton, S. (2024). Echoing images: dark reverberation and the Bachelardian imagination of folk horror in Alex Garland's Men. In K. Fuery (Ed.), Source details - Title: Film Phenomenologies: Temporality, Embodiment, Transformation (pp. 185-201). UK: Edinburgh University Press.
2023 Walton, S. (2023). Designing luxury: Sofia Coppola's production design. In S. Ferriss (Ed.), Source details - Title: The Bloomsbury Handbook of Sofia Coppola (pp. 237-254). UK: Bloomsbury Publishing.
2021 Walton, S. (2021). Other sides: loving and grieving with Heart of a Dog and Merleau-Ponty's depth. In R. Sinnerbrink (Ed.), Source details - Title: Emotion, Ethics and Cinematic Experience: New Phenomenological and Cognitivist Perspectives (pp. 38-57). UK: Berghahn Books.
2019 Walton, S. (2019). The electricity of blue roses: shorting the senses and sensing film mood in Twin Peaks: fire walk with me. In R. Catanese, F. Lavina, & V. Valente (Eds.), Source details - Title: From sensation to synaesthesia in film and new media (pp. 151-166). UK: Cambridge Scholars.
2016 Walton, S. (2016). Fabricating film: the neo-baroque folds of Claire Denis. In W. Moser, A. Ndalianis, & P. Krieger (Eds.), Source details - Title: Neo-Baroques: From Latin America to the Hollywood Blockbuster (pp. 76-99). Netherlands: Rodopi and Brill Press.
DOI
2009 Walton, S. N. (2009). Hit with a wrecking ball, tickled with a feather: gesture, deixis, and the Baroque cinema of Guy Maddin. In D. Church (Ed.), Source details - Title: Playing with memories: essays on Guy Maddin (pp. 203-223). Canada: University of Manitoba Press.
2008 Walton, S. N. (2008). Baroque mutants in the 21st century? Rethinking genre through the superhero. In A. Ndalianis (Ed.), Source details - Title: The contemporary comic book superhero (pp. 86-106). US: Routledge.

Date Role Editorial Board Name Institution Country
2022 - ongoing Board Member Alphaville: Journal of Film and Screen Median University College Cork Ireland

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