Film & Media Studies

This course examines the trajectory of the Academy Awards: from 1930s screwball comedies and backstage musicals to celebrated wartime classics; from 1950s Minnelli musicals to 1980s post-Vietnam war films. It will provide a concentrated, thumbnail history of American Cinema, which challenges students to consider and question the formal criteria (cinematography, acting, sound, editing) upon which critical judgement is based. It will introduce students to the canonical classics of American Cinema, inviting them to explore diverse film genres and even the occasional Academy extravaganza.

The course focuses on the history of North American cinema and in particular the identifying elements of production and industry (the genre system, the studio system, and the star system). Special attention is placed on cultural and formal elements as well as economic and distribution factors that have determined the success of North American cinema worldwide in a comparison with European cinema production. The topic for the 2025-2026 year is Hollywood Film Comedy (1920-1990). This course deals with, among others, the following thematic blocks: vaudeville comedy and film; slapstick comedy; screwball and romantic comedy; Hollywood comedians; New Hollywood comedy, Woody Allen.

Required readings include: 1) Institutional part: F. La Polla, Introduzione al cinema di Hollywood, Mondadori, Milano, 2006. Peter Decherney, Hollywood, Mulino, Bologna 2016. 2) Monographic course: Reference bibliography for preparing the paper will be available on the platform VIRTUALE from the beginning of the course.

The course is part of the Laurea Magistrale Program and is intended for advanced level students. Enrolment is by consent of the instructor. This course explores the role that visual imagery plays in contemporary society, by means of looking at the visual as a key communication as well as economic and cultural resource. The course offers both an overview of established critical theories of visual communication and more contemporary takes on visual analysis and visuality at large. To gain a critical understanding of the central role that visual communication plays in global and local contexts alike, the course relies on a wide range of examples and case studies from key communication industries including advertising, film, stock photography, branding, social media, and news media. As well as studying visual communication theories, methods for critical visual analysis and specific examples and cases, students develop their own original research on specific dimensions of visual communication.

One of the first forms of mass media, the power of the periodical was tremendous. It shaped readerships, politics, morality, and some of our best-loved works of fiction. With a focus on literary magazines, this course allows students to engage with literature in its original published form and to work with original artefacts. In the first week, students are given the intellectual and practical tools needed to handle and interpret physical and digitized periodicals through a series of seminars and workshops. Students then have two weeks of seminars, workshops, and excursions based around Victorian and Modernist periodicals, discovering familiar names in new contexts.

Video games have become one of the world's most lucrative media entertainment forms, grossing more as a global industry in the 21st century than film or television. However, the mass acceptance of video games and the industry's growth into an economically powerful business has also affected us socially, culturally, and aesthetically. This course examines the dynamics of video games from a variety of perspectives, including its historical and technological origins; ontological debates about the nature and necessity of games and play; the flexibility of game aesthetics; types of game genres and narratives; the people who play games both casually and actively; transmedial dimensions of games (particularly in Japan); and how games function in and represent society and culture at large. In addition to readings, students play a sample of video games throughout the semester in order to understand a variety of game genres, designs, and intersections with culture and society. 

This course examines the contemporary theoretical and empirical work from the fields of media and social semiotics to explore new media practices across social media platforms. A central focus is understanding the new forms of sociality that are emerging in relation to these new technologies. It looks at how identities are performed and communities are formed through close analysis of the communicative patterns observable in both small and large sets of social media texts. Of particular interest is how opinion and sentiment are construed in these texts.

This course offers a specialization within European or, more narrowly focused, Scandinavian film cultures. Issues that can be studied include genres, industry and expressions of artistic movements – as well as the creative persons involved. During the course, students are invited to explore a topic of their own interest, within the course framework, to be examined with an independent essay.

This course discusses the basics of video editing and the techniques and processes of digital post-production. It examines the different possibilities offered by digital post-production equipment: digital composition, digital effects, 2D graphics, and 3D animation.