A Sussex academic has won a national award for her latest book, which rethinks film aesthetics and sexual politics in international cinema.

The British Association of Film, Television and Screen Studies (BAFTSS) has introduced an annual award for best monograph to recognise the research achievements of its members.

Dr Rosalind Galt, Reader in Film Studies at Sussex, is the winner of the inaugural award for her book, Pretty: Film and the decorative image.

The volume, published by Columbia University Press in 2011, argues that film culture often rejects visually rich images, treating simplicity, austerity or even ugliness as the more provocative, political and truly cinematic choice.

“Cinema may challenge traditional ideas of art,” says Dr Galt, “but its opposition to the decorative represents a long-standing Western aesthetic bias against feminine cosmetics, Oriental effeminacy, and primitive ornament.

“Inheriting this patriarchal, colonial perspective, filmmakers, critics, and theorists have often denigrated colourful, picturesque, and richly patterned visions in cinema.”

Condemning the exclusion of the "pretty" from masculine film culture, in the book Dr Galt re-evaluates received ideas about the decorative impulse from early film criticism to contemporary film theory, analysing a wide range of world cinema from Wong Kar-wai and Santosh Sivan to Derek Jarman and Baz Luhrmann.

Dr Galt received the award at a special ceremony during the BAFTTS AGM on Thursday (20 September.)