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Richard Misek is a filmmaker and academic, whose work explores and inhabits the spaces between documentary film, digital art, and streaming video. He was born in Liverpool, educated at Oxford and Harvard universities, and worked as a video editor before completing a PhD at the University of Melbourne in 2008.

His hybrid video essay, real-time VR experience, and expanded cinema performance A Machine For Viewing(2019, co-created with Charlie Shackleton and Oscar Raby) screened at IDFA, Sundance Film Festival, and the Eye Filmmuseum (Amsterdam). His feature documentary Rohmer in Paris (2014) has been screened on five continents and at venues including the National Museum of Art (Washington D.C.), Museum of Moving Image and Anthology Film Archives (New York), the Barbican Centre and BFI Southbank (London), and Forum des images (Paris). He is also a pioneer in the field of audiovisual film and media studies, and his video essays have been cited in numerous best-of lists.

His research focuses in particular on exploring and expanding digital access to arts and culture and the digital commons. He has led several grant-funded research projects on film and online culture in collaboration with partners including Arts Council England, the Whitechapel Gallery, and the British Film Institute. Recent projects include ‘From TV to Metaverse: towards an inclusive Web 3.0’ (2022-23, Unimob/University of Bergen) and ‘Digital Access to Arts and Culture’ (2020-22, Arts and Humanities Research Council), the results of which have been widely reported in media outlets including the BBC and The Guardian.

His latest film, A History Of The World According To Getty Images, forms part of a longer investigative project into the power of the commercial archive industry, and the effect of this power on public access to our shared audiovisual heritage.

Misek's teaching focuses on media production, documentary, and video technology. He currently runs two courses ( and ) on the Bachelor in Television Production.

Book

Chromatic Cinema: A History of Screen Colour. 2010. Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell. 64 illustrations, 227pp.

Films and videos

A History of World According to Getty Images (2022, 19’)

A Machine for Viewing (2020, with Charlie Shackleton and Oscar Raby)

Captured Images (2019, 4’)

In Praise of Blur (2017, 5’30”, with Martine Beugnet)

The Black Screen (2017, 12’30”)

The Definition of Film (2015, 9’)

Rohmer in Paris (2013, 71’)

Mapping Rohmer (2011, 16’)

Refereed Articles

‘“Real-time” virtual reality and the ideology of immersion’. Screen 61.4 (winter), 2020.

‘Trespassing Hollywood: property, space, and the “appropriation film”’. October 153 (summer), 2015, pp 132-148.

‘Time-lapse and the projected body’ (co-written with Allan Cameron). The Moving Image Review and Art Journal 3.1, 2014, pp 36-48.

‘The “Look” and How To Keep It: Cinematography, Post-Production, and Digital Colour.’ Screen 51.4 (winter), 2010, pp 404-410.

‘Dead Time: Cinema, Heidegger, and Boredom.’ Continuum: Journal of Media and Cultural Studies 24.5 (October), 2010, pp 777-785.

‘The Invisible Ideology of White Light.’ The New Review of Film and Television Studies 8.2, 2010, pp 125-143.

‘Exploding Binaries: Point-of-View and Combat in The Thin Red Line.’ 
Quarterly Review of Film and Video 25.2, 2008, pp 116-123.

‘A Parallax View of Psycho.’ International Journal of Zizek Studies 2.1, 2008.

‘Wrong Geometries in The Third Man.’ Rouge 11, December 2007.

Book Chapters                       

‘“All I have to offer is myself”: the film-maker as narrator’ in Julia Vassilieva and Deane Williams (eds.), Beyond the Essay Film: Subjectivity, Textuality and Technology. University of Amsterdam Press, 2020.

‘The Black Screen’. In Martine Beugnet and Allan Cameron (eds.), Indefinite Visions, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2017, pp 38-52.

‘Modular Spacetime in the “Intelligent” Blockbuster: Inception and Source Code’ (co-written with Allan Cameron). In Warren Buckland (ed.), Hollywood Puzzle Films, New York: Routledge. 2014, pp109-124.

‘Mapping Rohmer: cinematic cartography in post-war Paris’. In Les Roberts (ed.), Mapping Cultures: Place, Practice, Performance, Palgrave-Macmillan, 2012, pp. 68-84.

‘Dead Time: Cinema, Heidegger, and Boredom’. In Julia Vassilieva and Con Verevis (eds.), After Taste: Cultural Value and the Moving Image, Routledge, 2011, pp 133-142.

Recent keynotes and invited talks

‘An Annotated History Of The World According To Getty Images’. The Video Essay, University of Paris – Diderot. October 2021

‘Digital Access to Arts and Culture’. ‘Videographic Media Studies: A Primer’. AMIM 2019 Reading Beyond Words: Approaches to Multimodality in the Media, Queen Margaret University of London, May 2019.

‘Relating [to] Colour’, Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam. March 2020. (Cancelled)

‘Machines for Viewing’. De près, de loin, le proche et le lointain. University of Paris, Diderot. March 2020. (Cancelled)

‘A Machine for Viewing’, IDFA DocLab symposium, Amsterdam, November 2019.

‘Videographic Media Studies: A Primer’. AMIM 2019 Reading Beyond Words: Approaches to Multimodality in the Media, Queen Margaret University of London, May 2019.

‘Black and White in Colour’. Experience Colours! conference, Aalto University, Helsinki, November 2018.

‘The Films of Eric Rohmer’. Public lecture at Royal Belgian Film Archive (Cinema Zuid, Antwerp), June 2018.

‘Six of Seven Things I Know About The Video Essay’. Masterclass at Monash University, Melbourne, April 2018.

‘All talk: Matias Piñeiro’s verbal narratives’. Royal Belgian Film Archive, Brussels, November 2017.

‘Why I Pirate Films’. TedX, Gulbenkian Theatre, Canterbury, June 2017.

‘Notes on the Video Essay’. European Network for Cinema and Media Studies pre-conference, University of Paris VII Diderot, June 2017.

‘Dé�ٴdzܰ��Ա𳾱�Գ�’. Forms of Criticism symposium, Parasol Unit, London, June 2016. Organised by the Institute of Modern and Contemporary Culture, University of Westminster.

‘The Stolen Film’. Cinematic Bricoleurs: Remixing, restyling and repurposing in contemporary filmmaking practicesymposium, King’s College London, January 2016.

Misek’s current UK Arts and Humanities Research Council project (in collaboration with Arts Council England) explores the opportunities provided by emergent digital technologies and practices to make arts and culture more accessible and inclusive. As a part of this, he is facilitating knowledge-exchange about best practices in digital arts and culture programming, sourcing and analysing equality data on online audiences for arts and culture, and helping Arts Council England and digital support agency The Space make the argument for blended live and digital delivery of arts and culture beyond the pandemic.