FILM STUDIES

Credit Points

20

Course Coordinator

Dr L Harbidge

Pre-requisites

None

Notes

Not available to those who have passed any other level 1 Film Studies course.

Overview

An introduction to the history of American cinema, covering films from the inception of cinema, the era of Classic Hollywood and late twentieth century ‘post-classical’ cinema. The course introduces students to a wide range of genres, including melodrama, screwball comedy, the gangster film, science fiction and the Western, and to the work of such directors as Orson Welles, Howard Hawks, John Ford, Martin Scorsese and Steven Spielberg among others. Lectures will place the films in the context of the film industry and the social and historical context of America.

Structure

3 one-hour lectures; 1 one-hour tutorial and 2 three-hour film screenings per week.

Assessment

1st Attempt: 1 two-hour examination (40%) and continuous assessment: 1 essay (35%), 1 exercise (15%), tutorial assessment (10%).

Resit: 1 two-hour written examination (100%).

Credit Points

30

Course Coordinator

Professor P Coates

Pre-requisites

Available only to students in Programme Year 2 or above who have passed FS 1004 or FS 1005.

Overview

The course will provide an introduction to the study of European cinema, an area that may be unfamiliar to many students. Since the unfamiliar is best approached through the familiar, the course will begin by discussing European cinema’s interaction with the dominant American mode. It will then review the major aesthetic debates generated by Soviet montage, German expressionism and Italian neo-realism, and the work of several major sixties and post-sixties figures (including those of the French New Wave). The course will emphasise European cinema’s distinct institutional and aesthetic qualities as an ‘art cinema’ in which poetic, political and philosophical impulses are present to a degree not generally found in American cinema, and will also raise the question of what is ‘European’, a pressing concern with the current stress on the EU state and supra-state structures.

A study pack will be provided and film-texts to be studied will normally include Shoot the Pianist (Truffaut), Battleship Potemkin (Eisenstein), Bicycle Thieves (De Sica), The Sacrifice (Tarkovsky) and Three Colours: White (Kieslowski) (all subject to availability).

Structure

3 one-hour lectures per week; 1 one-hour tutorial and 2 three-hour film screenings per week.

Assessment

1st Attempt: 1 two-hour examination (40%) and continuous assessment: 1 essay (30%), 1 exercise (10%), tutorial assessment (20%).

Resit: 1 two-hour written examination (100%).

Credit Points

30

Course Coordinator

Professor P Coates

Pre-requisites

Available only to students in Programme Year 3 or above who have passed FS 2502.

Notes

Admission subject to approval by Head of School.
THIS COURSE IS COMPULSORY FOR THOSE INTENDING TO TAKE FILM STUDIES AS A JOINT HONOURS OPTION.

Overview

‘Film Theory’ often serves as shorthand for the fusion of poststructuralist, feminist, Marxist and post-colonial forms of analysis that occurred in the late nineteen sixties. While paying due attention to this important development, this course will view film theory as an object of greater longevity and variety, arguing that an exclusive focus on post-‘68 perspectives is excessively limited. It will track the unfolding of film’s theorisation across this century, from the twenties texts of Eisenstein, Arnheim and Kracauer, through the theories of Bazin and the structuralist and post-structuralist reaction to them, up to the recent attempts to inaugurate a ‘post-theoretical’ era. The theories in question will be considered both as an expressions of philosophical positions and in terms of their capacity to illuminate - and interrogate - film texts.

Structure

1 two-hour lecture per week; 1 two-hour seminar per week; and 2 three-hour film screenings per week.

Assessment

1st Attempt: 1 two-hour examination (50%) and continuous assessment: essay (30%), exercise (10%), seminar work (10%).

Resit: 1 two-hour written exmination (100%).

Credit Points

15

Course Coordinator

Professor P Coates

Pre-requisites

Available only to students in Programme Year 3 or above. Admission subject to approval by the Head of School.

Notes

This is a 6 week course.

Overview

Many of the most successful recent films have been adaptations of classic literary texts. What occurs - what is gained and lost - in the process of adaptation? Does a text’s classic status fatally limit the filmmaker’s liberty? Is the ‘good’ adaptation by definition a critique of its source? This course will examine these and related issues through the confrontation of major texts and major filmmakers, conceptualising film and literature as equally valid, overlapping yet contrasting forms of signification. Authors to be studied will include Diderot, Tolstoy, Henry James and Borges. Film versions of the texts by directors such as Bertolucci, Bresson and Keslowski.

Structure

2 two-hour seminars per week; and 2 three-hour film screenings per week.

Assessment

1st Attempt: Continuous assessment: essay (80%) and seminar work (20%).

Resit: Essay (100%)

Credit Points

30

Course Coordinator

Dr L Harbidge

Pre-requisites

Available only to students in Programme Year 3 or above. Admission subject to approval by the Head of School.

Overview

This course examines the influence of the Film School Generation - the first generation of Hollywood filmmakers to be known for their film literacy, and to be motivated by the rise of auteurist criticism, US independent filmmaking and the French New Wave - on contemporary American filmmaking. The theoretical frameworks utilized by the course include modernism/postmodernism, realism/stylization and authorship. Filmmakers studied on the course include Scorsese, Coppola, Altman, Lynch and Fincher.

Structure

1 two-hour lecture, 1 two-hour seminar, plus 2 three-hour film screenings per week.

Assessment

1st Attempt: 1 two-hour examination (50%), continuous assessment: essay (30%), exercise (10%), seminar work (10%).

Resit: 1 two-hour written examination (100%).

Credit Points

15

Course Coordinator

Mr M Fradley

Pre-requisites

Available only to students in programme year 3 or above or by permission of the Head of School.

Notes

This is a 6-week course

Overview

Examining the popular notion that masculinity - and, in particular, white masculinity - in contemporary American culture is in a state of 'crisis', this course interrogates representations of normative - white, heterosexual and middle-class - men in recent Hollywood cinema. Looking in detail at key film texts of the last fifteen years, students will be encouraged to consider the political investments in rhetorically potent narratives and images of beleaguered white males. The films' complex negotiations with issues of race, class, gender and sexuality will be explored in depth from a variety of theoretical standpoints as the course works through the output of iconic male stars such as Clint Eastwood, Michael Douglas, Bruce Willis and Tom Hanks and films including Die Hard, Falling Down, Forrest Gump and Fight Club.

Structure

2 two-hour seminars per week and 2 three-hour film screenings per week.

Assessment

1st Attempt: Continuous assessment: essay (80%) and seminar work (20%).

Resit: Essay (100%).

Credit Points

15

Course Coordinator

Mr M Fradley

Pre-requisites

Available only to Senior Honours Film Studies students, or by permission of the Head of School.

Notes

This is a 6-week course.

Overview

From its origins in Gothic literature and the nightmarish visions of German Expressionism, the American horror film has been both spectacular and controversial during its prolonged and popular history. Working through the genre's evolution from the 1930s onwards, the course will examine the often sophisticated - and even subversive - trajectories of the American horror film, from the classical output of Universal Studios and RKO in the 1930s and 40s, through to the blockbuster excesses of the 1980s and 90s. Looking in detail at key generic figures, the course will also undertake detailed analysis of sub-genres such as the 'slasher' film and 'body horror'. Mobilising critical frameworks such as feminist theory, postmodernism, gender theory, auteurism and ideological analysis, the course offers a serious look at the playful politics of (un)pleasure.

Structure

2 two-hour seminars per week and 2 three-hour film screenings per week.

Assessment

Continuous Assessment: essay (80%) and seminar work (20%).

Credit Points

15

Course Coordinator

Dr L Harbidge

Pre-requisites

Available only to Senior Honours Film Studies students, or by permission of the Head of School.

Notes

This is a 6-week course.

Overview

Looking at the work of a variety of cinematic comedians from the silent era to the present day, this course examines the predominant features of comic performance in American cinema. Reading each comedian and his films in light of the important tradition of the Comedian Comic, this course considers the implications of comedic form for performance style, and explores such central issues as the comic persona, the slapstick body, comic identity and comedy narratives. Students will undertake detailed analysis of the personas of a range of comedians including Buster Keaton, Woody Allen, Steve Martin, Jim Carey and Ben Stiller.

Structure

2 two-hour seminars per week, and 2 three-hour film screenings per week.

Assessment

Continuous assessment: essay (80%) and seminar work (20%).

Credit Points

15

Course Coordinator

Professor P Coates

Pre-requisites

Available only to Senior Honours Film Studies students or by permission of the Head of School.

Notes

This is a 6-week course.

Overview

This course will examine some of the paradoxes involved in the theory and practice of documentary, with particular reference to questions of documentary ethics, epistemology and the controversies surrounding the variously-motivated ‘staging’ of reality. Issues connected with the representation of the Holocaust will constitute the course’s main case study. Subject to availability, films to be studied will include Chris Marker’s Sans Soleil, Claude Lanzmann’s Shoah, Leni Riefenstahl's Triumph of the Will and Chronicle of a Summer by Jean Rouch and Edgar Morin.

Structure

2 two-hour seminars per week; and 2 three-hour film screenings per week.

Assessment

Continuous assessment: essay (80%) and seminar work (20%).

Credit Points

30

Course Coordinator

Professor P Coates

Pre-requisites

Available only to Senior Honours students in Joint Honours Film Studies.

Notes

The field work aspects of this course may pose difficulties to some students with disabilities. If this arises, alternative arrangements will be made available. Any student wishing to discuss this further should contact the School Disability Co-ordinator.

Overview

This course will provide students with guidance on writing a dissertation on a topic approved by a the Head of School.

Structure

Required field work: visits to other libraries by individual students.

Assessment

Dissertation (100%).