Contents

Autumn Term

* Film Analysis
* Working With Film

Spring Term

* Conceptualizing Film
* Screening History

The assessment for each module is based on written work of up to 6,000 words, consisting of one or two pieces depending on the individual course.

The third element of the MA is the 15000 word dissertation. Throughout the course you will spend time researching and preparing for the dissertation. Your primary writing period will be in the Summer term and vacation. The completed dissertation is submitted in late August or early September, with the Examination Board meeting in October or November.

Your dissertation topic will be chosen by you, and is undertaken with individual supervision provided by a member of the Film Studies staff. The topic is only limited by the availability of resources and supervision.

Research Seminars

In conjunction with School of Drama Film and Visual Arts, the Film Studies Department organizes Research Seminars across the academic year. Your participation at these events is very much part of your training while undertaking your MA.

Taught MA Modules and Dissertation Topics

Screening History

Many films and many kinds of films are concerned with representing the past and films, especially documentary films, are often treated as an important source of historical information. At the same time film itself, in all its forms and uses, is a mode of representation with a specific and particular history. For all these reasons, the various ways in which `film´ and `history´ intersect are especially interesting and this course is designed to explore them. In particular it is concerned not just with the nature of the history that is represented in any one film or group of films, but also the nature of the historical context in which these representations were produced, and hence the preoccupations, conventions and concerns with which they are marked.

Working with Film

This core MA module examines film as a corpus of materials from over a century of global history, and considers the historical, conceptual and methodological aspects of `identification´, classification and description of films, including questions of genre; national cinemas; film history; film and history; authorship; analysis, interpretation and evaluation; `race´, gender, sexual difference and sexuality; film theory. In addition, it seeks to enable you to examine critically what is at stake in some of the different modes of interpretation and analysis which have been practiced to date on moving image material.

Conceptualizing Film

The course will engage students in the process of carefully examining the ways in which scholars within cinema studies conceptualize film. The areas covered are wide ranging, including temporality, space, representation, realism, cinephilia, cities and engagement. These themes will be approached mainly through contemporary films, especially those developed using digital technologies. In seminars students will be encouraged to interrogate and debate the possibilities offered by readings on the course. They will also be encouraged to make connections between the approaches encountered in the different weeks in order to in order to reflect upon the current era of digital filmmaking.

Film Analysis

In this course we explore narrative achievement in world cinema (with a special focus on American cinema 1917-1960). We consider the claims and accomplishments of relevant scholarship pertaining to film style and interpretation. The course aims to develop skills in the close analysis of film style, and to deploy those skills in the service of interpretive argument and evaluation. Seminar sessions will provide the opportunity for detailed exploration and group discussion of particular sequences from the week´s film. Discussion will be informed by, and will often directly turn to, the weekly readings.

Recent dissertations have explored the following areas in film studies and other moving images:

* Contemporary Korean Cinema
* Music videos
* Subtitles in film
* Aesthetics, Ethics and Cinema
* Depictions of extreme sexual violence in recent cinema
* 'Gay cowboy films'
* Transnational film remakes
* Catherine Breillat and film authorship
* Digital games
* Warner Bros animation
* Action heroes
* Hitchcock and adaptation
* Buffy the Vampire Slayer
* Music in Quentin Tarantino films
* Hollywood horror