Rory Kelly

Rory Kelly is a filmmaker and professor. His first feature, SLEEP WITH ME, premiered as an Official Selection at Cannes, received a Gala Screening at Toronto and was distributed by MGM/UA. His second feature, SOME GIRL, garnered him the Best Director Award at the Los Angeles Film Festival. His most recent short, THE WOMEN, premiered in 2006 at the Long Island Film Festival. That same year he was co-executive producer on SUCKS LESS WITH KEVIN SMITH for mtvU. In 2009-10 Kelly was a Screenwriting Fellow at Film Independent with his script, THE END OF SOMETHING, co-written with a former student, Tim McCarthy (this project was also accepted to IFP’s prestigious No Borders Co-Production Market).

In terms of research, Kelly is focused on exploring the links between narrative and formal elements in the cinema and our evolved psychology. Since 2011 he has been engaged in a funded interdisciplinary research project that seeks to introduce empirical and formal techniques from the study of linguistic discourse to the study of visual narrative, in particular film. He has also been named as a collaborator on an NSF Grant for the period 1/2013-12/2015. This project seeks to generate complimentary art, science and public outreach films pertaining to geophysical fluid dynamics. He is a member of the Society of Cinema and Media Studies, the Society for Cognitive Studies of the Moving Image, the University Film and Video Association and Film Independent. In 2010 he received a UCLA Distinguished Teaching Award.

• LECTURER

• E-mail: roryk@ucla.edu