Film & Media Studies

Both the melodrama and the film noir have attracted considerable critical attention and have been instrumental in the development of film theory. The course considers formal, ideological, political, and historical aspects of melodramas and noirs from around the world focusing on aspects of gender, space, and aesthetics.

This course examines the connections between different cinemas within East Asia and between East Asia and the rest of the world from a genre perspective. Hong Kong and Korean film noir, Chinese swordplay and Japanese samurai films, horror films from Hong Kong and Japan: all are examples of the transnational circulation of genres, involving processes of both localization and globalization. Students will be invited to explore genre theory, trace complex webs of creative influences, and appreciate the sameness and difference that characterize both genre films and our globalizing world. They will also have a chance to apply this new knowledge in practice, by making a short “genre film” for screening at the end of the term.

This course focuses intensely on films of the Visegrad region - Czech, Slovak, Hungarian, and Polish - long known as an artistic and intellectual island within the greater European sphere. Although ravaged by war, foreign occupation, and totalitarian governments for much of the last few centuries, the Visegrad countries have managed to survive and often thrive as centers of culture and artistic experimentation. This course focus on films from four of the largest cultural groups in the Visegrad region with the goal of examining how this region’s history has impacted its culture by looking at the four regions’ responses to identity, war, and domestic social problems. In addition to focusing on film theory, the course also discusses cultural history and media theory, learning approaches to “reading” films not only as movies, but also as multi-faceted cultural artifacts. To this end, readings contain primary source materials on cinema history, historical research, film theory, and literature intended to broaden our understanding of the various cultures, visual and otherwise, which inform cinema creation in this part of Europe.

This course enriches students' culture by deconstructing many prejudices about a film genre that is often caricatured. It also provides a parallel view of the evolution of a young nation, and the main problems linked to its expansion. Working with films and documents emphasizes the importance of speaking out and constructing an argumentative discourse. Students also work on their writing skills through research projects.

This lesson help to students understand the basic concepts , the basic process of video editing, editing methods, effects compositing and output. We will learn and master the basic grammar non-linear editing commonly software in Avid Media Composer, and the use of early shooting equipment. We will understand master upload video clips, video editing, sound effects, subtitles, special effects, color correction, video output and other practical skills.

This course looks at the industrial, technological, and cultural changes in serial television and explore the themes, narratives, and aesthetics of contemporary long-form television. Students are introduced to key conceptual approaches to serial television as an artform and a production practice, examining seriality and long-form storytelling; notions of complexity; discourses of quality, taste, and cultural value; questions of authorship; innovations in visual style and sound design; the rise of streaming services such as Netflix; new viewing practices and habits (such as "binge-viewing"); and issues of gender equality and ethnic diversity on- and off-screen.

This course explores an appreciation of the unique aesthetics of fiction and non-fiction film from a holistic perspective.  The course looks at works from author-directors; documentaries, and anthropological films (also known as visual ethnography), which are categorized into different themes; the course them aims to see different expressions of the same theme in different films with a comparative discussion of films from other cultures.

The selected films are all Chinese language films, which means the class will enter the context of Chinese culture through the film text. It is not only the lines told in Chinese and the scenes taken on the ground in China, but the “the Chinese emotional presentation” and "the Chinese way of viewing.” 

The course also discusses a range of possibilities arising from the collision of film as an art form with the Chinese context.

This course offers an exploration of radical film and television in French Surrealism, Soviet Montage, Hollywood, and Third Cinema. It explores how cinema and television have provided a space for the representation of both radical ideas and radical aesthetics; introduces students to a wide range of radical texts from French Surrealism to Soviet Montage, from Hollywood to Third Cinema, analyzing feature films, documentaries, and television drama, and examines what is at stake in the attempt to challenge mainstream aesthetic norms and political ideologies.

This course introduces the diversity of crime fiction and film, with a dedicated focus on the linkages among different geographical regions and cultural traditions. By examining common or similar plot elements and artistic techniques, the course conveys how authors and filmmakers employ them in tales about crime to arouse audience interest. Students sample Western detective fiction and Chinese court-case fiction, as well as their adaptations in Japan and Latin America. The emphasis on grasping the tenets of adaptation will also be imparted through analyzing the relations between print media and moving images.