Film Studies

Film Studies is now available as a Option subject for students studying in other departments.

The Department of History of Art and Film website

Semester one

You will take two modules, one in each semester. 'Reading Film' introduces and develops the skills of textual analysis involved in ‘reading’ a feature film, focusing on narrative, genre, mise-en-scene and visual style. Classical Hollywood cinema of the 1940s and 1950s will be studied in the first part of the module, and European traditions of filmmaking in the second part.

Students taking this module should emerge with a fuller understanding and appreciation of some of the best-known films ever made.

Teaching is by a combination of lectures, screenings and seminars (one each per week) and the module is assessed by two essays of 1, 500 words each and a seminar presentation.

Semester two

In semester two you will take 'Realism and the Cinema' – this module focuses on an issue that has been central to film and cinema from its nineteenth-century origins – the ability of the camera to give an impression of reality.

Through an examination of a range of documentary and fiction films, selected ‘realist moments’ will explore how realism has been understood in the context of the cinema, and how this has changed over time and within different cultural contexts.

Teaching is by a combination of lectures, screenings and seminars (one each per week) and the module is assessed by a  two-hour examination (40% of marks), an essay of 1, 500-2, 000 words (40% of marks) and the completion of a seminar log (20%).