Curriculum Information

What is cinema? Where does it come from? How has it evolved? How has it reflected the world? How can it best be studied?

This module responds to the questions above by setting out the development of cinema from a sideshow to a fully-fledged art form and social experience. It establishes cinema as a both a commercial (genre) and experimental (movements) practice. The question of cinema and representation will be key with the module indicatively inviting you to consider the way in which cinema has represented race, class and gender.

The theoretical tools to discuss all the above will inform the lectures. Seminal readings in seminars will offer you the opportunity to analyse film, alongside the writings of leading film academics and of course question them!

Students will compare Hollywood classical narrative form with European experimental form, with fiction and non-fiction. You will be introduced to the key terms that form the basis of the formal debates: ‘genre’ ‘movement’, ‘classical’, ‘modernist’, ‘realism’ and ‘non-realism’.

The later part of the module will focus on cinema as a social practice, via a consideration of the representation of women in Hollywood, national cinema, diaspora cinema and documentary as an interventionist practice.