Film Studies and Sociology

Course overview

The combination of Film Studies and Sociology offers a challenging and stimulating programme of study. This course enables you to develop your understanding of film while equipping you with a range of critical and analytical skills designed to help you enjoy a rewarding career with a range of employers.

Film Studies offers an excellent balance of theory and practice, allowing you to engage with essential critical and aesthetic approaches to a range of films, and to apply these to a variety of practical projects. You well benefit from industry-standard facilities, including TV studios, multimedia suites plus digital video and 16mm film production and editing suites.

Core modules

• Introduction to Film and Cinema
• Social Science and Modern Society
• Researching Social Issues
• Theorizing the Specular and Classical Hollywood Cinema
• Social Research Methods
• Individual and Society
• Major Project in Film Studies or Sociology

Optional modules

• Contemporary Sociological Issues
• Introduction to Film and Cinema
• Visualization, Research and Storyboarding
• Film and Genre
• Introduction to Video
• History of Cinema
• Social Divisions
• Knowledge and Belief
• Applied Ethics
• Theorizing the Specular and Classical Hollywood Cinema
• Film, Identity and Globalization
• Documentary Film Theory
• 16mm Filmmaking
• Introduction to European Cinema
• Independent Cinema: US and Beyond
• Video Documentary
• Animation
• European Cinema and Identity
• Gender Relations
• Sexuality and Social Control
• 'Race', Racism and Identity
• Psychoanalysis and the Self II
• Special Subject
• Diaspora and Migration
• Contemporary Work and Organisational Life
• Sexuality and Social Control
• Nature and Society
• Concepts of Good and Evil
• Film Art
• Film, Modernity and Post-modernity
• Creative Practice in Film & Video
• Working in Film
• Avant-Garde Film and Experimental Video
• Multiplexed: Contemporary Popular Cinema
• Anglia Language Programme

Additional course information

The course approaches the study of film in a number of different ways, from the close reading of an individual film, to a broader consideration of film as an industry or as a cultural product. You will also have the chance to study experimental practices in film, as well as film-making from across the world and throughout the history of cinema. You will have opportunities to screen your work on and off-campus, to undertake commissioned work and to engage with the film industry through work placements, thereby developing skills of critical knowledge alongside transferable and vocational skills.

Sociology is concerned with the structures, institutions, powers and desires that motivate and control people, encouraging you to look beneath the surface of what we most take for granted about life. These insights can give us all sorts of new ways of making sense of human existence. The course is carefully designed to introduce you to the fundamentals of sociological theory from the start. Gaining a critical understanding of these issues will equip you with essential academic skills, whilst also encouraging you to develop as a creative and independent thinker. You also learn from case studies and research data about key issues of race, class and gender, and you will have the opportunity to participate in work placements related to sociology.

Assessment

Assessment is via a mix of traditional methods including examination, essays and presentations, plus a range of 'hands-on' methods including evaluation of students' production of creative work, plus the 'crit', during which students present and defend their own work.

As part of their learning students are encouraged to seek work placements and to generate commissioned work in a range of modules. These form part of the assessment where undertaken. Students are also required to give critical evaluations of creative work undertaken and in 'crits' where they present and defend their own work. Each year students undertake Personal Development Planning (PDP) which encourages reflection on progress to date and the achievement of transferable skills and knowledge.

Dedication

6 years, part-time.

Teaching times

• Mon 11.00-4.00pm
• Tues 1.00-3.00pm
• Wed 11.00-1.00pm

Teaching times for guidance only and subject to change.