Film & Media Studies

This course explores the role of cultural, creative, and media industries in shaping individual and collective memories of history. It examines the construction, manipulation, mediation, and transmission of personal, national, and transnational memories through various forms of media, including mobile and social, film, literature, the visual arts, performance, and participatory art. It explores how such mediated memories play a crucial role in the formation of individual and collective identities. The course introduces key theories of media memory studies and examines international examples of mediated memories of colonialism, war and activism, social, political, and technological change. It examines how mediated memories travel and change over time and how they are articulated differently within geopolitical and socioeconomic contexts and through different mnemonic technologies.

The Directing Actors course explores the well-known research fields of performance, gender, and star studies, in order to understand how a relationship between people, mediated by a camera, in different positions, is realized, adopting equally distinct procedures to achieve previously prepared results. Within this perspective, the aim is not to adopt a single method, sufficiently capable of encompassing countless possibilities, but to recognize the breadth of paths and tools available to direct people with significant, none, or insufficient professional experience.

In this course, students explore storytelling and analyze and dissect fiction from various media. Students start with literature, understanding how a story works, its structure, devices and narratives, and move into creating their own stories.  Through projection and discussion of examples, students analyze how films and TV shows tell stories and make their narrative as effective and surprising as possible. Students also analyze videogames with critical thinking and understanding tricks used in game design and narrative. Additionally, using the projections and discussions, students create their own original ideas and plots, using different creative exercises to build up to working on first script drafts. Video games included in the course include games that excel in storytelling and narrative by breaking the conceptions of what society views as a videogame.

This course explores both the theoretical and practical components of Self-Portrait as a genre. Students learn to observe and reflect on how they see themselves and how others see them. Students explore personal identity using mixed media and film diaries of everyday lives. The course includes three small projects, one for each genre topic and students analyze both classic and contemporary works throughout the course.

From the magic lantern to the early cinema, this course explores the context of the 19th-century history of Europe and the United States, told through the various European avant-garde movements. Moving forward, it observes the modernization of filmmaking with a focus on contemporary French cinema, by combining aesthetic and narrative considerations. Learning outcomes include: knowing film history focusing on this major period of its history; mastering specific filmmaking vocabulary; acquiring film analysis and basic methodology. 

This course focuses on how certain elements, such as direction, cinematography, editing, color, and sound all contribute to the artistry and emotional impact of a film. The goal is to understand how directors use these tools to create a specific aesthetic and convey their message.

The diverse history of experimental film practice is examined in this course through a lecture-based pedagogy that supports practice-based learning. The course examines the history of experimental film with reference to avant-garde, experimental, and moving image artistic practices. The course considers movements in other fine art practice and focuses on film as a medium of artistic self-expression. The course balances theory, history, and practice to address sometimes difficult and unfamiliar films that can blend subjective expressions of lyricism, tradition, personal experience, participation, technology, appropriation, performance, and mediation.