‘Fear and Desire’ – Archival discovery by Dr James Fenwick made about Stanley Kubrick’s first feature film
Research on filmmaker Stanley Kubrick, conducted by Dr James Fenwick, Senior Lecturer in Media Studies and the Course Leader for BA (Hons) Media, has been reported by the Venice Biennale as part of their 90th anniversary.
The Biennale has reported how James’ research uncovered that Kubrick submitted his first feature film, Fear and Desire, to the Venice Film Festival in 1953 where it screened out of competition in August 1952. The screening of the film, initially titled Shape of Fear, took place at the Palazzo del Cinema on the Lido on August 18, 1952, in a section called Festival of the Scientific Film and Art Documentary.
The subject of the presence of Kubrick’s first film in Venice emerged in the recent monograph by James Fenwick Stanley Kubrick Produces (Rutgers University Press, 2021) based on the documents preserved in the Stanley Kubrick Archives at the London College of Communication. You can read the article in full on the Biennale website, and the story has also been featured in the trade journal Variety.
Dr James Fenwick is Senior Lecturer and Course Leader for BA (Hons) Media. He is the author of Stanley Kubrick Produces (Rutgers University Press, 2020) and co-editor of Shadow Cinema: The Historical and Production Contexts of Unmade Films (Bloomsbury, 2020). His research focus is on the role of the producer, production companies, archives, and cultural industries. He is the co-convenor of the Archives and Archival Methods Special Interest Group, an editor of the Open Screens journal, and mentor for the Early Career Mentoring Scheme.