My name is James Batcho. I’m a professor, writer and lecturer on a variety of subjects, from storytelling and cinema to philosophy and media. I’m the author of the book Sound for Independent Audiovisual Storytelling and my second book, Terrence Malick’s Unseeing Cinema: Memory, Time and Audibility, will be published this June. I’ve written for Media Culture & Society, Studies in European Cinema, Journal of Sonic Studies, Film-Philosophy, The New Soundtrack and Atropos Press.
I currently teach film theory and practice in the Cinema and Television department at United International College in Zhuhai. For the past 11 years I have taught at universities in China, South Korea and the United States and given lectures and readings in Singapore, Australia, and Denmark. I earned summa cum laude honors for my dissertation Logos of Cinema: Memory and the Audibility of Unseeing at the European Graduate School.
I was sound designer and music supervisor for the documentary Ari Ari the Korean Cinema, which premiered at the prestigious PIFF Film Festival and ran nationwide in South Korea in 2013. I currently have a backlog of essays to compose, but I hope to return to designing sound for future films.
Please respect copyright of photography, words and projects contained or linked to here, which reside with me unless otherwise noted.
Here is my most current curriculum vitae (CV).