Biography
Professor Timothy W. Pollock lectures on film and visual culture at Osaka Kyoiku University, Japan. He has presented papers on film, semiotic theory, ethics, and education, all of which were structured around the central theme of the power of multi-modal, dramatic visual narratives. His film research has focused on the development of standards and practices in classical Japanese cinema in general, and on the later films of Ozu Yasujiro in particular, while his work in the field of semiotics has focused on the applicability of social semiotic theory to the analysis of Japanese cinema and Japanese visual culture.
Professor Pollock’s media work includes appearing in conversation with fellow film historian Stuart Galbraith IV on the new Blu-ray releases of the Akira Kurosawa films Sanjuro, Red Beard, and The Idiot from A Contracorriente Films. As a long-time resident of Japan, he has also worked as an assistant editor on the second edition of the GENIUS Japanese-English Dictionary. He has served as a judge for film festivals in the United Kingdom and India, and is currently serving as visiting faculty at the Manipal Institute of Communication in Karnataka, India.
Roundtable Discussion (2025) | Expanding Film and Media History: Lessons from Japan
