Film Studies MLitt

Each module typically comprises:

• weekly two-hour seminars, plus film screenings
• 100% coursework assessment.

For more details of each module, including weekly contact hours, teaching methods and assessment, please see the latest module catalogue which is for the 2018–2019 academic year; some elements may be subject to change for 2019 entry.

• Theory and Practice of Research in Film Studies: knowledge and skills training in both theoretical and methodological orientation which aims to teach students to correlate adequately conceptual frameworks and research designs.

Students choose two optional modules to complete their studies. Sample optional modules include:

• Colonial Cinema: explores the transnational developments in cinema, and examines the integral role that cinema played in the control, organisation and governance of the British Empire.
• Digital Cinema: explores the impact of digital media on the production, distribution, consumption and collection of moving images.
• Documentary Cinema: surveys the history of documentary film (technological, stylistic, etc), while taking up the theoretical debates around cinematic claims to truth and representations of reality.
• Film and the Archive: provides students with both a theoretical framework for archival research and practical experience in engaging with archival materials.
• Film Technologies and Aesthetics: the ways in which the emergence of new technologies – such as sound, colour, cameras and camera mounts, varying screen dimensions, and lighting systems – affect aesthetic issues in global cinemas.
• Sensory Cinema: considers the sensory qualities of cinema, a subject which engages variously with the film-as-object, film form and the spectator as active participant.
• Stars: explores the aesthetic, cultural, ideological and industrial sides of film stardom, featuring close study of individual stars from the silent era to the present.

The final three months of the course are focused on writing the final assessment piece, a 15,000-word dissertation. Student dissertations will be supervised by members of the teaching staff who will advise on the choice of subject and provide guidance throughout the research process. The completed dissertation must be submitted by a date specified in August.