Film & Media Studies

This course examines the intersection of music, AI, and creativity, drawing from the rapidly expanding critical scholarship on AI. While the class prioritizes musicological, sociocultural, and philosophical approaches to critiquing AI, it will also engage with other genres of writings from media studies, music information retrieval (MIR), computational creativity, and from within the music industry. 

From sparkly vampires to blockbuster monsters, gothic tropes appear to be all-pervasive in contemporary culture. As Catherine Spooner claims in CONTEMPORARY GOTHIC (2006), like "a malevolent virus, Gothic narratives have escaped the confines of literature and spread across disciplinary boundaries to infect all kinds of media, from fashion and advertising to the way contemporary events are constructed in mass culture." This course introduces students to Gothic’s literary expression in the British 19th century, before exploring the many ways in which this dark heritage continues to affect contemporary cultural production. Focusing on three key texts from the 19th century, FRANKENSTEIN (1818), THE STRANGE CASE OF DR JEKYLL AND MR HYDE (1886), and DRACULA (1897), this course discusses their adaptation, appropriation, and influence on popular narratives such as those found in fiction, film, tv, fashion, and music video. 

This course introduces long-format non-fiction storytelling and delves into the theoretical and practical realms of documentary filmmaking. It looks into the main elements of documentaries and explores the whole process of documentary filmmaking. The course focuses on the different genres and different techniques of documentary films as an important information base for students to produce their own films. It examines the wide array of documentaries covering political, cultural, historical, social, environmental topics, and more. The variety of genres and various techniques provide a wide base of documentary film experiences; this along with the encouragement of individual creativity is the backbone of the student's project throughout the semester.

This course offers a study of video art design and creation and the field of experimental cinema. It explores techniques and technologies of digital video and audio, as well as methods of audiovisual production. Students work in a group to develop an audiovisual project that incorporates video art techniques and formats. 

This course examines the deep connection between film and architecture. Both are art forms that shape and articulate our experience of space and place, influencing how we perceive and interact with the built environment. Through themes of space, place, and time, students will explore cinematic perspectives and methodologies for spatial analysis and design. By analyzing and making short films, students will also explore opportunities and strategies for storytelling, documentation, research and critique of the built environment. 

This course focuses on commercial films while also considering television dramas, web dramas, and short videos as narrative art forms. It offers both theoretical and practical teaching on the work of directors in narrative audiovisual arts. The course integrates teaching philosophies and approaches from world-renowned film schools, combined with Peking University's strong humanistic foundation and comprehensive academic strengths, forming a teaching mechanism that emphasizes both theory and practice. The course primarily consists of classroom lectures and practical guidance. Under the guidance of professional instructors, students will quickly grasp director theory and techniques. Industry elites are incorporated into the curriculum, with many top domestic and international screenwriters invited to teach. Following the teaching approach of "foundation" + "practice" + "innovation," students will acquire basic knowledge, be able to apply these skills to create and direct film segments, and be encouraged to think independently, learning to use audiovisuals to tell stories, express emotions, and convey ideas.

This course examines stars, celebrities, and fandom practices, as they are found in the media and popular culture (film, television, pop music, advertising, branding, news and magazines, the Internet and society media). Stars and celebrities also arise from beyond the mediasphere, with the possibility to consider literary stars, famous artists, royalties, and personalities from the fields of politics and sports. Academic approaches to fan cultures also critically engage with subcultural groups and participatory practices.

This course fulfils the dual function of introducing students to various canonical French texts and films and of introducing students to the study of narrative poetics, or "narratology" an important mode of literary analysis which was largely developed in France. Beginning with a comparative analysis of the narrative techniques of a 19th-century short story by Guy de Maupassant and its film adaptation by the great director Jean Renoir, the course then turns to the medieval and early modern versions of the popular tale LA CHESTELAINE DE VERGI. Afterward, students read the crucial 18th-century novel MANON LESCAUT, the source for Puccini's opera of the same name; they shall then turn to Emile Zola's 19th-century novel THÉRÈSE RAQUIN, studying both this text and its film adaptation. Finally, students examine a contemporary text remarkable for its narrative technique: Annie Ernaux's LA PLACE. 

Between the advent of talking pictures in 1927 and the official launch of the New Hollywood in 1967, the classic Hollywood system developed and experienced a golden age, followed by a decline that was to begin in the early 1950s. This is the official story, in line with a certain reality, but one to which the work of numerous historians has added nuance and nuance. This course takes a historical approach, incorporating recent research, to revisit the Hollywood studio system, based on the power of producers and the exploitation of stars. It also studies the structuring of film production into major genres (melodrama, western, musical, biopic, war film, social film, biblical epic, film noir, etc.), which are sometimes called into question by their reception, and whose stability is open to debate. The course also looks at the history of the introduction in the early 1930s of a self-regulatory code, the famous Hays Code, whose interpretation may have changed over time, and whose influence gradually waned between 1952 and 1967. It explores the ideological tensions that divided the Hollywood community, sometimes violently and permanently: the question of American involvement in the Second World War, the inquisitorial system of the "Witch Hunt" in the context of the Cold War. The essential contribution of artists and technicians from European immigrant backgrounds is studied, including producers, directors, actors and actresses, screenwriters, cinematographers and composers. The careers of figures who forged the identity and style of classic Hollywood cinema are also explored, including: Charles Chaplin, Alfred Hitchcock, Ernst Lubitsch, Erich Von Stroheim, Joseph Von Sternberg, Fritz Lang, Billy Wilder, Joseph L. Mankiewicz, Elia Kazan. The course also looks at the homogeneity of the classic Hollywood style described in Janet Staiger, Kristin Thompson, and David Bordwell's (also classic) THE CLASSICAL HOLLYWOOD CINEMA: FILM STYLE & MODE OF PRODUCTION TO 1960. The re-evaluation of the place of female directors (Dorothy Arzner, Ida Lupino), African-American directors (Oscar Micheaux), and marginal genres (horror, animation) in the Hollywood canon provides food for thought on the homogeneity of Hollywood style and the centrality of a hegemonic definition.

In this course, students explore the different areas and production roles that make up the filmmaking process. As a team, students create a short film. Guidance is provided through each production stage: development, pre-production, production, and post-production.