Module Identifier
TF10220
Module Title
STUDYING FILM
Academic Year
2008/2009
Co-ordinator
Dr Kate E Egan
Semester
Semester 2
Other Staff
 

Course Delivery

Delivery Type Delivery length / details
Lecture 10 x 1-hour (weekly) lectures
Seminars / Tutorials 10 x 1-hour (weekly) seminars
Other 10 x 3-hour (weekly) film screenings
 

Assessment

Assessment Type Assessment length / details Proportion
Semester Assessment 1 x 2,500-word Textual Analysis  50%
Semester Exam 2 Hours   1 x 2 hour Formal Examination  (answering two questions, one previously circulated and one from a list of around eight previously unseen questions, requiring essay-style answers, held during the semester 2 examination period)  50%
Supplementary Assessment All failed or mising elements must be retaken or made good.  Different assignment questions and a resit examination paper during the formal August supplementary assessment period will be provided for this purpose. 

Learning Outcomes

On completion of this module, students should be able to:

1. Explore the ways in which individual film form and content may be related to wider historical, cultural, political and social contexts.

2. Understand the purposes of the key theories and concepts that have dominated the academic study of film, and be able to apply these theories and concepts to film examples.

3. Effectively and purposefully analyse the formal construction of film texts.

4. Draw critically uopn a range of reading from the field of film studies.

Aims

The aim is to offer a comprehensive introduction to the academic study of film at Level 1. The central questions the module aims to address are: why have films and cinema been seen as worthy of study, and what key concepts, theories and methods have been centrally employed to explore film's artistic, social, cultural and historical significance? In order to address these questions, the module aims to introduce students to ten key topic areas that have dominated discussion and debate in film studies, to apply theories that have dominated these topic areas to relevant film examples, and to then offer the opportunity for students to develop their critical skills, by debating and critiquing these theories in seminar sessions.

The module aims to serve as a solid introduction to key topics, concepts, debates and issues (for those students who are new to film studies), and, for students who are planning to continue to take film studies modules during Part 2, to introduce concepts and connect them to debates and issues which will underpin the more complex exploration and development/problematisation offered in the film studies modules available in Part 2.

Content

Lecture sessions will explore the following topics:

Brief description

Each lecture aims to introduce students to a particular topic area, and the key theories and concepts that have dominated the study of this topic area in film studies. Each lecture is accompanied by a screening of a relevant film, which is drawn upon in the relevant lecture, in order to illustrate and test the relevant theories and concepts. A seminar then follows each lecture and screening, in order to enable students to further debate and critique the key concepts and issues (through engagement with relevant reading), and, as a consequence, to enable students to consider the issues in relation to other relevant film examples and to develop their critical and communication skills.

Within and through this structure, students will become familiar with core academic approaches to studying film (including film and representation, film narrative, national cinema, film and moral debates, star studies, film genre, film authorship, academic analyses of film and film aesthetics). In addition, students will also, throughout the module, be given continual opportunities to develop their analytical skills, through close formal analysis of relevant film texts (the particular focus of one lecture, one seminar and their first assessment for the module).

Module Skills

Skills Type Skills details
Communication * Students' written communication skills will be developed (e.g. appropriate language and style, accuracy, precision and ability to be concise). * Opportunities will be given, through seminar sessions, for students to develop confidence in using their speaking and listening skills when communicating their ideas.
Improving own Learning and Performance * Students will be able to develop their skills of information location and retrieval. * Students will be given opportunities to develop effective note-taking skills. * Students will develop their critical thinking skills. * Through group discussion, students will be given opportunities to develop an awareness of the opinions of others and reconsider initial ideas if necessary.
Information Technology * Students will be given the opportunity to develop their authorial and note-taking skills when planning and preparing for the written assignment, and will be encouraged to develop their note-taking skills in lectures. * Students will be given opportunities to develop their skills in searching for relevant reading and other materials (such as film reviews), through the University's Voyager Library Catalogue, the University electronic journal resource, Joey, and through the newspaper database, Lexis-Nexis. * E-mail and Blackboard will remain the main forms of communication and information sharing in this module, so students will be encouraged to actively engage in these processes.
Personal Development and Career planning * Students will be given the opportunity to evaluate current knowledge and skills and set targets for self-improvement. * Students will be encouraged to take increasing responsibility for managing their own learning. * Students will be encouraged to build upon the knowledge gained from lectures through developing skills in self study (supported by the general and specifuc reading lists and other resources distributed throughout the module).
Problem solving * Students should be able to identify tensions and debates in the field, and will be encouraged to critically reflect on the process by which academics arrive at particular theoretical interpretations of particular films.
Research skills * Students will be able to develop their skills of information location and retrieval (in particular through the first assessment, where they are required to locate one academic piece of writing on their chosen film and then summarise its argument). * Students will be able to develop their textual analytic skills, and to learn to analyse texts in a focused and puropseful manner.
Team work * All seminar sessions will involve group work where students will be able to collaborate through discussion, and then feed back their ideas to the seminar group as a whole.

Reading List

Essential Reading
Hollows, Joanne, Peter Hutchings and Mark Jancovich (eds) (2000) The Film Studies Reader Arnold Primo search Supplementary Text
Ashby, Justine and Andrew Higson (eds) (2000) British Cinema, Past and Present Routledge Primo search Barker, Martin and Julian Petley (eds) (2001) Ill Effects: The Media/Violence Debate 2nd ed Routledge Primo search Bordwell, David & Thomson, Kristin (c2001.) Film art :an introduction /David Bordwell, Kristin Thompson. McGraw Hill Primo search Cook, Pam (2008) The Cinema Book 3rd ed BFI Primo search Dyer, Richard (2002) The Matter of Images: Essays on Representation 2nd ed Routledge Primo search Elsaesser, Thomas and Warren Buckland (2002) Studying Contemporary American Film : A Guide to Movie Analysis Arnold Primo search Hill, John & Church Gibson, Pamela (1998.) The Oxford guide to film studies /edited by John Hill and Pamela Church Gibson. Oxford University Press Primo search Neale, Steve (2000) Genre and Hollywood Primo search Thompson, Kristin (1999) Storytelling in the New Hollywood: Understanding Classical Narrative Technique Harvard University Press Primo search

Notes

This module is at CQFW Level 4