FILM AND VISUAL CULTURE

Credit Points

15

Course Coordinator

Dr L McMahon

Pre-requisites

None.

Notes

This is a compulsory course for entry into the Honours Film and Visual Culture programme.

Overview

This course offers an introduction to the language and practice of formal film analysis. Each week we will explore a different element of film form and analyze the ways in which it shapes the moving image. Rather than offering a survey of film history or a small collection of classics, this course invites students to think about formal elements within and across a wide range of genres, styles, historical moments, and national contexts. By the end of this course, the successful FS1505 student will have acquired the necessary tools to continue coursework in film studies. Students will be able to recognize and communicate the ways in which meaning is made in cinema.

Structure

2 one-hour lectures, 1 one-hour tutorial per week, and 1 three-hour screening.

Assessment

1st Attempt: 1 Essay 1,500-2,000 words (40%); 1 two-hour Final Cumulative Exam (40%); Tutorial Assessment (20%).

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

Formative Assessment

Short writing assignments (including responses papers, shot-by-analyses, and screening reports) will be submitted and discussed in tutorial groups.

Feedback

Written and/or oral feedback will be offered on short tutorial assignments (see above) and essays.

Credit Points

15

Course Coordinator

Dr J Stewart

Pre-requisites

None.

Co-requisites

None.

Notes

This is a compulsory course for entry into the Honours Film and Visual Culture programme.

Overview

What is Visual Culture? Over the last twenty years, the visual landscape has become digital, virtual, viral, and global. The image-as-object has disintegrated. The theatre-as-architecture has collapsed. Visual media have been mixed and re-mixed in the museum and online. In turn, a vibrant cross-section of scholars and practitioners from Art History, Critical Theory, Cultural Studies, Anthropology, and Film Studies have responded, not only engaging contemporary image production and consumption, but also the foundations of visual knowledge: What is an image? What is vision? How and why do we look, gaze, and spectate? From the nomadic pathways of the digital archive to the embodied look that looks back, this course will introduce students to the key concepts and theories that shape this fluid field. We will engage film, video and mixed media from across the twentieth and twenty-first century, and texts by key theorists such as Walter Benjamin, Jacques Lacan, Gilles Deleuze, Frederic Jameson, Donna Haraway and Jean Baudrillard.

Structure

1 two-hour lecture/seminar per week, and 1 one-hour tutorial every two weeks, and a weekly three-hour screening.

Assessment

1st Attempt: Two 1,500-2,000 word essays (80%); Tutorial Assessment (20%).

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

Formative Assessment

Short writing assignments will be submitted and discussed in tutorial groups.

Feedback

Written and/or oral feedback will be offered on short tutorial assignments (see above) and essays.

Credit Points

30

Course Coordinator

Dr S Ward

Pre-requisites

FS 1506.

Notes

This is a compulsory course for entry into the Honours Film and Visual Culture programme.

Overview

This survey course introduces students to a selected constellation of significant visual and textual sites from the first fifty years of film practice, including the 'attractions' of early cinema, the rise of Hollywood and the studio star, the kino-eye of city cinema, and the cinematic aftermath of WWII. Each week, we will explore a different historical moment and a set of key film-theoretical concepts, looking at how film intersects with modernity. Students will acquire not only a knowledge of these specific historical sites, but also a facility with critical and comparative thinking. Students will learn to move between film practice, film history, and film theory to analyze the ways in which the moving image makes meaning.

Structure

2 one-hour lectures, 1 one-hour tutorial per week, and 1 three-hour screening.

Assessment

1st Attempt: 1 two-hour written examination (50%). In-course assessment: one 1,500-2,000 word essay (40%) and tutorial assessment (10%).

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

Formative Assessment

Short writing assignments (including responses papers, shot-by-shot analyses, and screening reports) will be submitted and discussed in tutorial groups.

Feedback

Written and/or oral feedback will be offered on short tutorial assignments (see above) and essays.

Credit Points

30

Course Coordinator

Dr l McMahon

Pre-requisites

FS 1506, FS 2003.

Notes

This is a compulsory course for entry into the Honours Film and Visual Culture programme.

Overview

This survey course introduces students to a selected constellation of significant visual and textual sites from the second fifty years of film practice. This course examines how cinema has responded to social, political and aesthetic revolutions in the second half of the twentieth century. Examples of the kinds of cinema to be discussed may include New Wave film-making in Europe , New Hollywood, Soviet and Eastern European cinema, national and third cinemas, the growth of new media.

Each week explores a different historical moment and a set of key film-theoretical concepts. Students will acquire not only a knowledge of these specific historical sites, but also a facility with critical and comparative thinking. The course aims to teach the students how to move between film practice, film history, and film theory to analyze the ways in which the moving image makes meaning. We will treat film as a product of the industrial age, as an element of urban culture, and as a means of imaginary transportation.

Structure

2 one-hour lectures, 1 one-hour tutorial per week, and 1 three-hour screening.

Assessment

1st Attempt: 1 two-hour written examination (50%). In-course assessment: one 2,000 word essay (40%) and tutorial assessment (10%).

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

Formative Assessment

Short writing assignments (including responses papers) will be submitted and discussed in tutorial groups.

Feedback

Written and/or oral feedback will be offered on short tutorial assignments (see above) and essays.

Credit Points

30

Course Coordinator

Dr S Ward

Pre-requisites

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

Co-requisites

This course may not be included as part of a graduating curriculum with FS 40FB (Transport Technologies B). It will be available in session 2011/12 and in alternate sessions thereafter.

Overview

The term cinema is derived from the Greek, kinema, implying both motion and emotion, and the course enables students to think through this relationship with the study of a series of films from a variety of since the 1960s that not only critically address the road movie's generic narrative structure and codes, its ideologies of race, gender and capital, and its relationship to the American and non-American cultural imaginary, but that also re-engage the affective potential of the cinematic journey.

Structure

1 one-hour lecture and 1 two-hour seminar per week.

Assessment

1st Attempt: 1 essay (2 500 words) (40%), 1 two-hour written examination (50%), Seminar Assessment (10%).

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

Formative Assessment

Students are expected to complete web-ct submissions each week, on which feedback is provided.

The essay is completed during the course. Feedback on this work will provided to the student in helping them to prepare for the examination.

Feedback

Through comments on webCT submissions and essays.

Credit Points

30

Course Coordinator

Dr S Ward

Pre-requisites

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

Co-requisites

This course may not be included as part of a graduating curriculum with FS 40FA (Cinematic Cities B). It will be available in session 2012/13 and in alternate sessions thereafter.

Overview

The course will focus on the relationship between the cinema and the urban environment, focusing on specific thematic issues. These include: the city and cinematic visions of utopia/dystopia; the city and the figure of the detective/flaneur/flaneuse; the city as site of cultural encounter and social conflict; the city as a site of globalisation; the city and production and consumption; the city and the development/reworking of cinematic tradition. The course will also explore the relationship between the experience of cinematic space and urban space, and how they have been interconnected throughout the history of cinema.

Structure

1 one-hour lecture and 1 two-hour seminar per week.

Assessment

1st Attempt: One essay (2,500 words) (40%), 1 two-hour written examination (50%), Seminar Assessment (10%).

Resit: Written examination (100%).

Formative Assessment

Students are expected to complete blackboard submissions each week, on which feedback is provided.

The essay is completed during the course. Feedback on this work will provided to the student in helping them to prepare for the examination.

Feedback

Through comments on MyAberdeen submissions and essays.

Credit Points

30

Course Coordinator

Dr A Marcus

Pre-requisites

Available only to film studies and film and visual culture students in Programme Year 3 or by permission of the Head of School.

Overview

This course will explore the role of panoptic observation within film and the arts, and in contemporary society and trace its historical roots. The course will examine the way in which our society has embraced a public surveillance application of CCTV and web cam culture, augmented by digital cameras, the mobile phone camera and use of home web cams. Through a series of seminars and screenings, the course will study how this use of technology has impacted on social life, our aesthetic sensibility and our sense of personal and collective identity. Students will investigate this cultural practice by creating a video installation that maps an interpretative panoptic vision.

Structure

1 two-hour seminar, 1 one-hour seminar per week, and 1 film screening per week as needed.

Assessment

1st Attempt: Project assessment (50%), 2,000-2,500 word essay (40%), Seminar Assessment Mark (10%).

Resit: One 5,000 word essay (100%).

Formative Assessment

One non-assessed video project, which gives students an opportunity to hone their research and production skills before undertaking the second project, which is assessed.

Feedback

The essay is completed during the course and written feedback will be provided. Verbal in-class feedback, including peer feedback, will be provided on both the assessed and non-assessed projects to the production teams, and students are also asked to provide
peer-review written feedback. The tutor's written feedback on the assessed project is provided upon completion and marking.

Credit Points

30

Course Coordinator

Dr A Marcus

Pre-requisites

Available only to film studies and film and visual culture students in Programme Year 3 or by permission of the Head of School.

Overview

The course will invite comparisons between key critical texts and themes which focus on variants of entrapment, as presented in a range of feature films. Film adaptation, analysing narrative form and constructions of place and the production of space will inform our investigations, in addition to considering the linkage between films and their social and historical contexts within popular culture.

Structure

1 two-hour seminar, 1 one-hour seminar per week, and 1 film screening per week.

Assessment

1st Attempt: 1 two-hour examination (50%), one 2,000-2,500 word essay (40%), and SAM (10%).

1 two-hour written examination (100%).

Formative Assessment

Students are expected to complete blackboard submissions through MyAberdeen each week, which then provide the basis for seminar discussions.

The essay is completed during the course. Feedback on this work will be provided to the student in helping them to prepare for the examination.

Feedback

Through comments on essays.

Credit Points

30

Course Coordinator

Dr A Marcus

Pre-requisites

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

Co-requisites

This course may not be included as part of a graduating curriculum with FS 40IB The Narrative Within the Frame. It will be available in session 2011/12 and may be offered in alternate sessions thereafter.

Overview

This course will investigate different forms of image making, including paintings, photographs and films by different artists from a range of historical periods. We will be considering narrative form and content as shaped by subject selection, composition and framing, use of colour or black and white, and control of light. These themes will be considered from aesthetic, historical and theoretical perspectives. Through a series of seminars, workshops and screenings, students will learn approaches to still and moving image making that will culminate in a practice-based creative project including a group video installation.

Structure

1 one-hour lecture and 1 two-hour seminar per week.

Assessment

1st Attempt: Video installation project (50%), 2,500 word essay (40%), SAM (10%).

Resit: 5,000 word essay (100%).

Formative Assessment

The essay is completed during the course and corresponds to the video installation project.

Feedback

Through comments on essays and reports produced on the group video installation projects.

Credit Points

30

Course Coordinator

Dr A Marcus

Pre-requisites

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

Co-requisites

This course may not be included as part of a graduating curriculum with FS 40xx (Looking Up B). It will be available in session 2011/12 and may be offered in alternate sessions thereafter.

Overview

This course will examine how by adopting a youth's point of view, the filmmaker privileges their approach to constructing a filmic narrative. A number of overlapping themes will be examined through a selection of films from American, European and world cinema. Among the topics to be considered are: a child's view of war, defender of the community, coming of age, confrontation with authority and 'the Other', economic hardship, impact of marital break-up and single-parent families, separation anxiety, and survival. We will additionally focus on film adaptations and the link between films and their social and historical contexts within popular culture.

Structure

1 one-hour lecture and 1 two-hour seminar per week, and weekly screenings.

Assessment

1st Attempt: 1 essay (2,500 words) (40%), 1 two-hour written examination (50%), Seminar Assessment (10%).

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

Formative Assessment

The essay is completed during the course. Feedback on this work will be provided to the student to help them to prepare for the examination.

Feedback

Through comments on essays.

Credit Points

30

Course Coordinator

Dr K Groo

Pre-requisites

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

Co-requisites

This course may not be included as part of a graduating curriculum with Global Silent Cinema B. It will be available in session 2011/12 and in alternate sessions thereafter.

Overview

While the transition to sound in 1929 brought a new layer of sensory experience to the cinema, synched sound technology also homogenized the film market, eliminating the idiosyncratic film formats, genres, and theatre experiences that defined the silent era. This course will introduce students to the eccentricities and complexities of cinema's first three decades: from Japanese Benshi narration to Russian melodrama, from ethnographic expedition films to abstract animations. Each week, we will be guided by a different concept (eg. language, narrative, sex/voyeurism, the archive, comedy, etc.) and a new constellation of questions. This course will conclude by making some connections between the user-oriented paradigms of early cinema and those that give shape to contemporary digital media. Readings will include (among others): Henri Bergson, Siegfried Kracauer, Jacques Derrida, Miriam Hansen, Tom Gunning, Richard Abel, Jennifer Bean, and Paolo Cherchi Usai.

Structure

1 one-hour lecture and 1 two-hour seminar per week.

Assessment

1st Attempt: 1 essay (2,500 words) (40%), 1 final project (40%), WebCT Responses (10%), Seminar Assessment (10%).

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

Formative Assessment

Students are expected to complete web-ct submissions each week, on which feedback will be provided.

Two pieces of written work are also completed during the course (the essay and final project). Extensive feedback on this work will be provided.

Feedback

Through comments on web-ct submissions, essays, and final projects.

Credit Points

30

Course Coordinator

Dr J Stewart

Pre-requisites

Available only to students in programme year 3 or at the discretion of the Head of Department.

Co-requisites

This course may not be included as part of a graduating curriculum with FS 45KA (The Politicisation of the Aesthetic: Film, Visual Culture and Social Change B), GM 3554 (Wozu Kunst? Art and Activism in the German-Speaking Countries A) or GM 4554 (Wozu Kunst? Art and Activism in the German-Speaking Countries B).

Overview

This course sets out to examine what might be called, following Walter Benjamin, the place of the 'politicisation of the aesthetic', in a world increasingly dominated by the cultural economy. The course concentrates on the work of artists who believe that art can and should be used to effect social and political change, looking at how such work can be understood and evaluated. The course provides a series of case studies, drawing on art forms as varied as film and experimental video art, architecture, new media, conceptual art and performance art, and dealing with themes such as urban interventions and regeneration, feminism, community art, art and the environment, anti-globalisation and anti-war protest, and the right to culture. The practice of socially-engaged art exemplified by collectives such as 'Wochenklausur' and movements such as 'New Genre Public Art' will be contextualised through critical analysis of socially and politically engaged art at key points over the past century, including avant-garde conceptions of engaged art and the activist art of the 1960s (eg Fluxus).

Structure

1 one-hour lecture, 1 two-hour seminar and 1 two-hour screening per week, one field trip (gallery or project).

Assessment

1st Attempt: In-course assessment (100%): 1 project and written report 2,500 words (40%); 1 research essay 3,000-3,500 words (50%) and seminar work (10%).

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

Formative Assessment

Feedback on performance on the short essay, which will be returned before the second essay is due. Contributions to seminars, including short written responses to works screened.

Feedback

Formal feedback will be provided on both essays in the form of written comments provided on a template. Students will also be encouraged to discuss their performance on a one-to-one basis with the course co-ordinator. Written feedback will be offered on short written responses. Informal feedback on contributions to seminars will be offered on an on-going basis and students will also receive feedback in the form of a seminar assessment mark and written comments.

Credit Points

30

Course Coordinator

Dr L McMahon

Pre-requisites

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

Overview

This course explores the concept of national cinema--its consolidation, rupture, and recombination--in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. From the height of Hollywood's Golden Age to the state-controlled works of Syrian cinema, we will consider: How do national boundaries structure and shape cinema? How does the national help us to organize and analyse film? Through seminar discussion and frequent writing assignments (responses, essay drafts, and revisions), students will not only examine the uses of the national as a framework for analysing cinema, but will also interrogate a handful of key counterpoints to national paradigms. Examples may include sixth-generation Chinese cinema, Nollywood, minor film forms such as independent and indigenous video, and co-productions from across the twentieth century. These distinct sites trouble the boundaries of the national and foreground cinema's complex position in the flows of global capital, language, and visual culture. Readings will be drawn from, among others, Richard Abel, Mark Betz, Rosalind Galt, Kay Dickinson, Natasa Durovicova, Ella Shohat.

Structure

1 two-hour seminar and 1 one-hour writing workshop per week.

Assessment

1st Attempt: One essay (ca. 1,200 words) (10%), two further essays (ca. 1,500-2,000 words) (30%), one final research essay (3,000 words) (25%); five short Blackboard submissions (25%), seminar participation (10%).

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

Formative Assessment

Formative assessment is central to this course. Students will be required to complete a number of short Blackboard submissions, which form not only the basis of seminar discussion, but will also form the building blocks of the essays which they will bring to class in the writing workshops. These essays will be peer reviewed by their fellow students on a one-to-one basis, after which the students will submit a final version of the essay for assessment by the course tutor.

Feedback

Feedback is provided by
1. Peer review of their written work in the writing workshops
2. Tutor comments on their submitted essays.

Credit Points

30

Course Coordinator

Dr K Groo

Pre-requisites

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

Co-requisites

This course may not be included as part of a graduating curriculum with FS 40MB (Minor Cinemas B). It will be available in session 2012/13 and in alternate sessions thereafter.

Overview

Taking Gilles Deleuze's concept of "minoration" as a starting point, this course explores the minor/minority across a wide range of visual forms, formats, and exhibition practices. Screenings will include amateur films, home movies, orphan scraps, trailers, and youtube clips, as well as works from "minority" film communities (third cinema, independent, experimental, etc). Throughout the semester, we will keep a handful of broad questions in circulation: What is minor cinema? Who makes it and where does it place? What is the relationship between minor and major cinemas? What are the politics and pleasures of the out of bounds and in-between? In recent years, these questions have become all the more urgent, as cinema has moved out of the hands of so-called "professionals" and into entirely new circuits of production, distribution, and spectatorship. The minor seemingly threatens to overwhelm the major with amateur abundance?

Structure

1 one-hour lecture and 1 two-hour seminar per week.

Assessment

1st Attempt: 1 essay (2,500 words) (40%), 1 final project (40%), VLE Responses (10%), Seminar Assessment (10%).

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

Formative Assessment

Students are expected to complete web-ct submissions each week, on which feedback will be provided.

Two pieces of written work are also completed during the course (the essay and final project). Extensive feedback on this work will be provided.

Feedback

Through comments on web-ct submissions, essays, and final projects.

Credit Points

30

Course Coordinator

Dr A Marcus

Pre-requisites

Available only to film studies and film and visual culture students in Programme Year 3 or above or by permission of the Head of School.

Overview

This course will explore the history of the documentary film and theoretical approaches to interpreting its context, and allow students to engage in production by putting into practice methodologies they have studied through a series of seminar discussions, workshops and screenings. Students will research two topics (one assessed and one non-assessed) and work in teams to film them and utilize the Media Lab's facilities to complete the projects through post-production.

Structure

1 two-hour seminar and 1 one-hour seminar per week, and 1 film screening per week as needed.

Assessment

1st Attempt: Project assessment (40%), 2,000-2,500 word essay (40%), research presentation (10%), Seminar Assessment Mark (10%).

Resit: One 5,000 word essay (100%).

Formative Assessment

One non-assessed video project, which gives students an opportunity to hone their research and production skills before undertaking the second project, which is assessed.

Feedback

The essay is completed during the course and written feedback will be provided. Verbal in-class feedback, including peer feedback, will be provided on both the assessed and non-assessed projects to the production teams, and students are also asked to provide
peer-review written feedback. The tutor's written feedback on the assessed project is provided upon completion and marking.

Credit Points

Course Coordinator

Dr L McMahon

Pre-requisites

Overview

An introductory overview of the history of French cinema will be followed by detailed study of a number of French and Francophone films. The introduction will stress the particular status of film as a serious art form in France, and the position of French cinema in relation to that of the rest of Europe and Hollywood. It will study the cinema's response to and reflection of the major historical events of the twentieth century in France. Through case studies that engage with Francophone postcolonial contexts, the course also invites critical reflection on the concept of French cinema as a particular site of cultural investment. The detailed study will be organised chronologically, from the 1930s to contemporary film, but will concentrate on the aesthetic and formal aspects of the films to be studied.

Structure

One-hour lecture and 1 one-hour seminar per week; film showings as necessary.

Assessment

1st Attempt: Two written assignments (2,000-2,500 words) (40% each); one 10-minute presentation 10%; seminar participation (10%).

Credit Points

30

Course Coordinator

Dr l McMahon

Pre-requisites

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

Co-requisites

This course may not be included as part of a graduating curriculum with FS 45Fx (Creaturely Cinematics A). It will be available in session 2011/12 and in alternate sessions thereafter.

Overview

This course explores the representation of animals in international cinema, focusing in particular on questions of ethics and politics, and on connections between philosophical thought and cinematic forms. The course examines fiction and documentary film, animation and experimental film and video, tracing links between the portrayal of animals onscreen and issues of myth, ethnography, gender, technology and death. Filmmakers/artists to be studied may include Robert Bresson, Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Peter Greenaway, Bill Viola, Sh?hei Imamura, Apichatpong Weerasethakul, Nicolas Philibert, Claire Denis and Jan ?vankmajer. Drawing on recent work on animality by thinkers such as Jacques Derrida, Giorgio Agamben and Donna Haraway, the course attends in particular to visual engagements with the animal which appear to unravel a clear divide between the human and the non-human. In what ways do creaturely forms onscreen invite us to rethink the ethics and politics of spectatorship and the ontological status of the human?

Structure

1 one-hour lecture and 1 two-hour seminar per week.

Assessment

1st Attempt: 1 essay (2,500-3,000 words) (40%); 1 two-hour written examination (50%); Seminar Assessment (10%).

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

Formative Assessment

The first essay is completed during the course. Feedback on this work will provided to the student in helping them to prepare for the examination.

Feedback

Through comments on essays.

Credit Points

30

Course Coordinator

Dr S Ward

Pre-requisites

Available only to students in Programme Year 4 or with approval by the Head of School.

Co-requisites

This course may not be included as part of a graduating curriculum with FS 35F... (Transport Technologies A). It will be available in session 2011/12 and in alternate sessions thereafter.

Overview

The term cinema is derived from the Greek, kinema, implying both motion and emotion, and the course enables students to think through this relationship with the study of a series of films from a variety of since the 1960s that not only critically address the road movie's generic narrative structure and codes, its ideologies of race, gender and capital, and its relationship to the American and non-American cultural imaginary, but that also re-engage the affective potential of the cinematic journey.

Structure

1 one-hour lecture and 1 two-hour seminar per week.

Assessment

1st Attempt: 1 essay (2,500-3,000 words) (35%); 1 research essay (3,500 words) or 1 creative project with reflective essay (2,500 words) (45%), 1 seminar presentation (10%); Seminar Assessment (10%).

Resit: Not normally available.

Formative Assessment

Students are expected to complete web-ct submissions each week, on which feedback is provided.

The first essay and the seminar presentation are completed during the course. Feedback on these pieces of work will provided to the student in helping to frame the work that will be done for the research essay,

Feedback

Through comments on webCT submissions, essays and seminar presentations.

Credit Points

30

Course Coordinator

Dr S Ward

Pre-requisites

Available only to students in Programme Year 4 or with approval by the Head of School.

Co-requisites

This course may not be included as part of a graduating curriculum with FS30FA (Cinematic Cities A). It will be available in session 2012/13 and in alternate sessions thereafter

Overview

The course will focus on the relationship between the cinema and the urban environment, focusing on specific thematic issues. These include: the city and cinematic visions of utopia/dystopia; the city and the figure of the detective/fl-neur/fl-neuse; the city as site of cultural encounter and social conflict; the city as a site of globalisation; the city and production and consumption; the city and the development/reworking of cinematic tradition. The course will also explore the relationship between the experience of cinematic space and urban space, and how they have been interconnected throughout the history of cinema.

Structure

1 one-hour lecture and 1 two-hour seminar per week.

Assessment

1st Attempt: 1 essay (2500-3000 words) (35%); 1 research essay (3500 words) or 1 creative project with reflective essay (2500 words) (45%); 1 seminar presentation (10%); Seminar Assessment (10%)

Resit: not normally available

Formative Assessment

Students are expected to complete blackboard submissions each week, on which feedback is provided.
The first essay and the seminar presentation are completed during the course. Feedback on these pieces of work will provided to the student in helping to frame the work that will be done for the research essay.

Feedback

Through comments on MyAberdeen submissions and essays,

Credit Points

30

Course Coordinator

Dr A Marcus

Pre-requisites

Available only to film studies and film and visual culture students in Programme Year 4 or by permission of the Head of School.

Co-requisites

This course may not be included as part of a graduating curriculum with the level 3 version of the course.

Overview

This course will explore the role of panoptic observation within film and the arts, and in contemporary society and trace its historical roots. The course will examine the way in which our society has embraced a public surveillance application of CCTV and web
cam culture, augmented by digital cameras, the mobile phone camera and use of home web cams. Through a series of seminars and screenings, the course will study how this use of technology has impacted on social life, our aesthetic sensibility and our sense of personal and collective identity. Students will investigate this cultural practice by creating a video installation that maps an interpretative panoptic vision.

Structure

1 two-hour seminar, 1 one-hour seminar per week, and 1 film screening per week as needed.

Assessment

1st Attempt: Project assessment (40%); 2500-3000 word essay (40%); research presentation (10%); Seminar Assessment Mark (10%).

Resit: not normally available

Formative Assessment

One non-assessed video project, which gives students an opportunity to hone their research and production skills before undertaking the second project, which is assessed.

Feedback

The essay is completed during the course and written feedback will be provided. Verbal in-class feedback, including peer feedback, will be provided to the production teams on both the assessed and non-assessed projects, and students are also asked to provide peer-review written feedback. The tutor's written feedback on the assessed project is provided upon completion and marking.

Credit Points

30

Course Coordinator

Dr A Marcus

Pre-requisites

Available only to film studies and film and visual culture students in Programme Year 4 or by permission of the Head of School.

Co-requisites

This course may not be included as part of a graduating curriculum with the level 3 version of the course.

Overview

The course will invite comparisons between key critical texts and themes which focus on variants of entrapment, as presented in a range of feature films. Film adaptation, analysing narrative form and constructions of place and the production of space will inform our investigations, in addition to considering the linkage between films and their social and historical contexts within popular culture.

Structure

1 two-hour seminar, 1 one-hour lecture per week and 1 film screening per week.

Assessment

1st Attempt: 1 two-hour examination (40%); one 2,500-3,000 word essay (40%); one research presentation (10%) and SAM (10%).

Resit: Not normally available

Formative Assessment

Students are expected to complete blackboard submissions through MyAberdeen each week, which then provide the basis for seminar discussions. Written feedback provided for research presentations.
The essay is completed during the course. Feedback on this work will be provided to the student in helping them to prepare for the examination.

Feedback

Through peer and tutor feedback on research presentations and tutor's comments on essays.

Credit Points

30

Course Coordinator

Dr A Marcus

Pre-requisites

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

Co-requisites

This course may not be included as part of a graduating curriculum with FS 40IB The Narrative Within the Frame. It will be available in session 2011/12 and may be available in alternate sessions thereafter.

Overview

This course will investigate different forms of image making, including paintings, photographs and films by different artists from a range of historical periods. We will be considering narrative form and content as shaped by subject selection, composition and framing, use of colour or black and white, and control of light. These themes will be considered from aesthetic, historical and theoretical perspectives. Through a series of seminars, workshops and screenings, students will learn approaches to still and moving image making that will culminate in a practice-based creative project including a group video installation.

Structure

1 one-hour lecture and 1 two-hour seminar per week.

Assessment

1st Attempt: Video installation project (50%), 2,500 word essay (40%), SAM (10%).

Resit: 5,000 word essay (100%).

Formative Assessment

The essay is completed during the course and corresponds to the video installation project.

Feedback

Through comments on essays and reports produced on the group video installation projects.

Credit Points

30

Course Coordinator

Dr A Marcus

Pre-requisites

Available only to students in Programme Year 4. Admission subject to approval by the Head of School.

Co-requisites

This course may not be included as part of a graduating curriculum with FS 30xx (Looking Up A). It will be available in session 2011/12 and may be offered in alternate sessions thereafter.

Overview

This course will examine how by adopting a youth's point of view, the filmmaker privileges their approach to constructing a filmic narrative. A number of overlapping themes will be examined through a selection of films from American, European and world cinema. Among the topics to be considered are: a child's view of war, defender of the community, coming of age, confrontation with authority and 'the Other', economic hardship, impact of marital break-up and single-parent families, separation anxiety, and survival. We will additionally focus on film adaptations and the link between films and their social and historical contexts within popular culture.

Structure

1 one-hour lecture and 1 two-hour seminar per week, and weekly screenings.

Assessment

1st Attempt: 1 essay (3,500 words) (40%), 1 two-hour written examination (40%), Seminar Presentation (10%), Seminar Assessment (10%).

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

Formative Assessment

The essay is completed during the course. Feedback on this work will be provided to the student to help them to prepare for the examination.

Feedback

Through comments on essays and research presentations.

Credit Points

15

Course Coordinator

TBC

Pre-requisites

Available only to senior honours Film Studies students or by permission of the Head of School.

Notes

This course will not be available in session 2011/12.

Overview

This course will allow students to engage in filmed dramatic scenarios, putting into practice methodologies they have studied through a series of screenings, workshops and seminar discussions. Students will research a topic, cast and film it on digital video and complete the project through post-production.

Structure

2 two-hour seminars per week plus 1 three-hour film screening per week.

Assessment

1st Attempt: One project assessment (40%), one logbook assessment (50%) and seminar work (10%).

Credit Points

30

Course Coordinator

Dr K Groo

Pre-requisites

Available only to students in programme year 4 or by permission of the Head of School.

Co-requisites

FS 1503, FS 2002, FS 2505

Notes

This course may not be taken as part of a graduating curriculum with FS 30MA: Bodies on Screen A. This course will not be available in Session 2011/12.

Overview

This course will trace the visual and theoretical encounters between the human body and the cinematic machine. What is the body? What becomes of the body on screen? What does the cinematic body mean? How do these meanings change across time and geography? We will consider a number of bodily representations and transformations, including the malleable body of early cinema, the industrialized/politicized body of the “kino-eye,” the bodily excesses of horror and dance, and the digital body of the twenty-first century. Through writings on spectatorship, we will likewise consider the actual bodies that gather to consume these images.

Structure

1 one-hour lecture and 1 two-hour seminar per week, and a weekly screening.

Assessment

1st attempt: Essay (2,500-3000 words) (40%), Project (40%), in-course assessment (10%), Seminar Assessment (10%).

Resit: 1 two-hour written examination.

Credit Points

30

Course Coordinator

Dr J Stewart

Pre-requisites

Available only to students in programme year 4 or at the discretion of the Head of Department.

Co-requisites

This course may not be included as part of a graduating curriculum with FS35KA (The Politicisation of the Aesthetic: Film, Visual Culture and Social Change A), GM3554 (Wozu Kunst Art and Activism in the German-Speaking Countries A) or GM4554 (Wozu Kunst Art and Activism in the German-Speaking Countries B).

Overview

This course sets out to examine what might be called, following Walter Benjamin, the place of the 'politicisation of the aesthetic', in a world increasingly dominated by the cultural economy. The course concentrates on the work of artists who believe that art can and should be used to effect social and political change, looking at how such work can be understood and evaluated. The course provides a series of case studies, drawing on art forms as varied as film and experimental video art, architecture, new media, conceptual art and performance art, and dealing with themes such as urban interventions and regeneration, feminism, community art, art and the environment, anti-globalisation and anti-war protest, and the right to culture. The practice of socially-engaged art exemplified by collectives such as 'Wochenklausur' and movements such as 'New Genre Public Art' will be contextualised through critical analysis of socially and politically engaged art at key points over the past century, including avant-garde conceptions of engaged art and the activist art of the 1960s (e.g. Fluxus).

Structure

1 one-hour lecture, 1 two-hour tutorial and 1 two-hour film screening per week; 1 field trip (gallery or project).

Assessment

1st Attempt: in-course assessment (100%); 1 oral presentation (10%), 1 project and written report 3000 words (30%), 1 written assignment 3500-4000 words (50%) and seminar work (10%)

Resit: For honours students only: candidates achieving a CAS mark of 6-8 may be awarded compensatory level 1 credit. Candidates achieving a CAS mark of less than 6 will be required to submit a new essay.

Formative Assessment

Feedback on performance on the short essay, which will be returned before the second essay is due. Contributions to seminars, including short written responses to works screened.

Feedback

Formal feedback will be provided on both essays in the form of written comments provided on a template. Students will also be encouraged to discuss their performance on a one-to-one basis with the course co-ordinator. Written feedback will be offered on short written responses. Informal feedback on contributions to seminars will be offered on an on-going basis and students will also receive feedback in the form of a seminar assessment mark and written comments.

Credit Points

30

Course Coordinator

Dr K Groo

Pre-requisites

Available only to students in Programme Year 4 or with approval by the Head of School.

Co-requisites

This course may not be included as part of a graduating curriculum with FS30MB (Minor Cinemas A). It will be available in session 2012/13 and in alternate sessions thereafter

Overview

Taking Gilles Deleuze's concept of "minoration" as a starting point, this course explores the minor/minority across a wide range of visual forms, formats, and exhibition practices. Screenings will include amateur films, home movies, orphan scraps, trailers, and youtube clips, as well as works from "minority" film communities (third cinema, independent, experimental, etc.). Throughout the semester, we will keep a handful of broad questions in circulation: What is minor cinema? Who makes it and where does it place? What is the relationship between minor and major cinemas? What are the politics and pleasures of the out of bounds and in-between? In recent years, these questions have become all the more urgent, as cinema has moved out of the hands of so-called "professionals" and into entirely new circuits of production, distribution, and spectatorship. The minor seemingly threatens to overwhelm the major with amateur abundance.?

Structure

1 one-hour lecture and 1 two-hour seminar per week.

Assessment

1st Attempt: one essay (2500-3000 words) (35%), one final project (35%), one seminar presentation (10%), VLE Responses (10%), Seminar Assessment (10%)

Resit: not normally available

Formative Assessment

Students are expected to complete web-ct submissions each week, on which feedback will be provided.
Two pieces of written work are also completed during the course (the essay and final project). Extensive feedback on this work will be provided.
Students will also give one seminar presentation. Feedback will be provided on this contribution as well.

Feedback

Through comments on web-ct submissions, seminar presentations, essays, final projects.

Credit Points

15

Course Coordinator

Dr A Marcus

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. This course will not be available in Session 2011/12.

Overview

This course will allow students to engage in documentary production exercises, putting into practice methodologies they have studied through a series of screenings, workshops and seminar discussions. Students will research a topic, film it and complete the project through post-production.

Structure

2 two-hour seminars per week plus 1 three-hour film screening per week.

Assessment

1st Attempt: One project assessment (40%), one logbook assessment (50%) and seminar work (10%).

Credit Points

30

Course Coordinator

Dr K Groo

Pre-requisites

Available only to students in Level 4 Film or at the discretion of the Head of School.

Overview

This course will provide students with guidance on writing a dissertation on a topic approved by the programme co-ordinator for the Head of School.

Structure

3 one-hour tutorials

Assessment

1st Attempt: One 8000 word dissertation (100%); or one film project (40%) and one accompanying critical dissertation (5000-6000 words)(60%)

Resit: For honours students only: candidates achieving a CAS mark of 6-8 may be awarded compensatory level 1 credit. Candidates achieving a CAS mark of less than 6 will be required to submit a new dissertation.

Formative Assessment

Feedback on draft material - in individual tutorials

Feedback

Feedback on essays will be in the form of written comments on work, utilizing a standard feedback sheet. Additionally students will be invited to make appointments to discuss their work with their tutor. Informal feedback will be provided in oral form.

Credit Points

30

Course Coordinator

Dr J Stewart

Pre-requisites

Available only to students in Level 4 or at the discretion of the Head of School.

Co-requisites

This course may not be included as part of a graduating curriculum with FS 45XX (Vienna 1900: Scandalous Art B), GM 3518 (Vienna 1900 A) or GM 4518 (Vienna 1900 B). It will be available in 2009/10 and in alternate sessions thereafter.

Overview

What is an artworld? What is a filmworld? How do the visual arts engage in world-making? And what happens when filmworlds and artworlds collide? These are questions taken up by a number of film-makers, whose work will be considered on this course, including Jean Luc Godard, Peter Greenaway, Stanley Kubrick, Peter Watkins and Raoul Ruiz. The course centres on Ruiz's Klimt (2006), a filmic reconstruction of a particular artworld (Vienna around 1900 - the 'birthplace of modernism') that also seeks explicitly to explore the effect of the introduction of new film technology on that artworld. The course studies the film in relation to: the cultural history of Klimt's Vienna, including filmic approaches; discourse from around 1900 on the changing nature of vision and visuality; Ruiz's Poetics of Cinema; the film's relationship to other 'artist biopics' that similarly set out to construct filmic artworlds; and theoretical accounts of the relationship between art and film.

Structure

1 two-hour seminar per week and 1 one-hour tutorial (to be arranged) per week, film screenings (to be arranged).

Assessment

1st Attempt: Continuous assessment (100%): 1 project and written report 3000 words (40%); 1 written essay 4000 words (50%) and seminar work (10%).

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

Formative Assessment

Feedback

Credit Points

30

Course Coordinator

Dr l McMahon

Pre-requisites

Available only to students in Programme Year 4 or with approval by the Head of School.

Co-requisites

This course may not be included as part of a graduating curriculum with FS 35F...(Creaturely Cinematics A). It will be available in session 2011/12 and in alternate sessions thereafter.

Overview

This course explores the representation of animals in international cinema, focusing in particular on questions of ethics and politics, and on connections between philosophical thought and cinematic forms. The course examines fiction and documentary film, animation and experimental film and video, tracing links between the portrayal of animals onscreen and issues of myth, ethnography, gender, technology and death. Filmmakers/artists to be studied may include Robert Bresson, Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Peter Greenaway, Bill Viola, Sh?hei Imamura, Apichatpong Weerasethakul, Nicolas Philibert, Claire Denis and Jan ?vankmajer. Drawing on recent work on animality by thinkers such as Jacques Derrida, Giorgio Agamben and Donna Haraway, the course attends in particular to visual engagements with the animal which appear to unravel a clear divide between the human and the non-human. In what ways do creaturely forms onscreen invite us to rethink the ethics and politics of spectatorship and the ontological status of the human?

Structure

1 one-hour lecture and 1 two-hour seminar per week.

Assessment

1st Attempt: 1 essay (2,500-3,000 words) (35%); 1 research essay (3,500 words) (45%), 1 seminar presentation (10%); Seminar Assessment (10%).

Resit: Not normally available.

Formative Assessment

Students are expected to complete web-ct submissions each week, on which feedback is provided.

The first essay and the seminar presentation are completed during the course. Feedback on these pieces of work will provided to the student in helping to frame the work that will be done for the research essay.

Feedback

Through comments on web-ct submissions and essays.