Description

"The Public Value of Film: Moving Images, Health, and Well-being" Mette Hjort is Chair Professor of Humanities and Dean of Arts at Hong Kong Baptist University. Professor Hjort obtained her bachelor’s degree in English Literature, Theatre, and Film and Communications and master’s degree in Communications from McGill University, and her PhD in History and Civilizations from the École des hautes études en sciences sociales in Paris. She was awarded an Honorary Doctorate by Aalborg University in Denmark in 2017. Mette Hjort’s research spans across the fields of literary studies, theater studies, philosophy, and film and media studies. Much of her research has focused on the cinemas of small nations, with a special emphasis on practitioner’s agency, creativity under constraint, gift culture, milieu-building, and artistic projects as alternatives or complements to cultural policy. Mette Hjort has collaborated with FilmLab: Palestine, the Danish Film Institute, and the Danish House in Ramallah, in connection with initiatives for children and youth. Her community engagement also includes collaboration with the alternative film school, Imagine, in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso. Mette Hjort has served on the University Grants Committee in Hong Kong and on the Board of the Danish Film Institute. She has taught at McGill University, Aalborg University, Hong Kong University, Lingnan University, and the University of Copenhagen, and she has held visiting positions at University College London and the University of St. Andrews. She has been recognized as a leader in pioneering and significantly establishing the field of small nation cinema studies. Her publications include the monograph "Small Nation, Global Cinema" (2005), and the edited volumes "The Education of the Filmmaker in Africa," "The Middle East and the Americas," and "The Education of the Filmmaker in Europe, Australia and Asia" (both from 2013).