Film & Media Studies

Through the study of this course, international students can go from scattered knowledge to targeted "liking" of Chinese films, and even through appreciating representative Chinese film masterpieces, they can have a deeper understanding of the direction and characteristics of Chinese history and culture, and the artistic achievements of Chinese films, thereby gaining a deeper understanding of China, the Chinese people and Chinese culture.

The course explores various aspects of cinema in Egypt and the Arab World in order to understand its history and determine the themes, styles, and character of this cinema which has been historically among the most influential in national world cinemas. It covers selected films by a number of auteurs from Egypt, Lebanon, and Palestine. Special attention is paid to form and style, as well as recurrent themes; for example, the civil war and Israeli invasions in the case of Lebanon, and the Israeli occupation in the case of Palestine. Additional topics include areas such as New Arab Cinemas, classical Egyptian cinema, the Arab film industry, and independent Arab cinema.

This course examines the evolving realities of the various media industries in Hong Kong, China, and beyond. The overarching questions to be discussed in the class include: How can one characterize the configuration of the contemporary media industries? What are the key trends underlying the transformation of the media industries? What are the implications of these transformations for “media workers”? What does it mean by working as a journalist, a creative content producer, an advertiser, etc. in the contemporary world and in the future? What are the communication practices involved in the various industries? What are the broader social, cultural, and political implications of the transformation of media work and media industries?

This course introduces students to key theoretical debates that have emerged in the study of Scotland’s relationship with the film and television industries. Important questions include: Who is responsible for constructing Scotland’s identity onscreen? How are Scotland and Scottishness depicted? Why do certain representations dominate over others? The course begins by exploring "Hollywood Scotland," concentrating on the commercial cinematic representation of Scotland and Scottishness found in Mel Gibson’s BRAVEHEART (1995). This is then contrasted with a more local construction of Scotland found in the long running television show TAGGART (ITV, 1983-2011). The class concludes by considering filmmaking in contemporary Scotland, first through contemplation of the importance of short films in the Scottish context, focusing in particular on the shorts and careers of Lynne Ramsay, Peter Mullan, and Morag McKinnon, and second through examination of the Scottish/Danish co-produced Advance Party initiative.

This course offers a study of film and tv in Spain including basic concepts, approaches, and methodologies of analysis. Topics include: historical periods and social, cultural, and aesthetic keys; film and tv canon-- authorship and popular cinema; issues, questions, and cases of film and tv in Spain. Prior academic-level knowledge of Spanish history from 1940-1992 is strongly recommended.

The contemporary era shows a proliferation of film production from all over the African continent, and in this course, students become familiar with some of the most significant developments in narrative styles, genres, themes, and aesthetics in contemporary African cinemas. The course also includes discussions of suitable theoretical and critical frameworks in which to analyze and interpret these new films and film movements.

This course awakens for the active spectator, in terms of aesthetics, cultural capital, and politics, new utopian ways of being, dreaming, interpreting, looking, and thinking as so many forms of “labor” and of “movement”. Combining these promotes an ecology of dialectical questioning and thinking about new, utopian post-capitalist forms of beauty, equality, and freedom for the twenty-first century. These movement and labor forms are dialectically subject within the space of the cinematic frame and institution to both regressive-capitalist and progressive-emancipatory-post-capitalist forms, in relation to the world system, of affective, cognitive and monetary circulation. The seminar thus draws on and explores egalitarian and novel non-hegemonic ways of engaging gestures, ideas, images, and scenes in films from a range of postmodernist/postwar global films and world-auteurs: Chantal Akerman (Belgium), Michelangelo Antonioni (Italy), Rainer Werner Fassbinder (Germany), Terrence Malick (USA), Alain Resnais (France), Andrei Tarkovsky (USSR), Agnès Varda (France), and Orson Welles (USA). Cinema as the art of forms of movement thus is evaluated anew. Attention is given to those cinematic moments and scenes that teach and that train us in new non-dominatory and emancipated viewing strategies of movement and circulation as so many utopian forms of thinking, looking, and individual/collective being. In so doing, it considers arts and forms of movement and circulation as not only subject to capitalist commodification, but also as modes of active engagement, interpretation, and thinking that take place precisely in a shared space for post-capitalist common content, creation, and thought in post-capitalist and emancipated utopian forms of circulation. The role of cinematic silence and of the unconscious in film culture is also given critical coverage.

In this course, students explore and develop their sense of visual narrative in a wider context. The course begins with an overview of some of the key theories of visual narrative and looks at a broad range of examples from within design and screen cultures to help consider how images and spaces can tell stories with or without accompanying words. Narrative perspectives of the maker, the audience, and visual form itself are examined to aid students understanding of the visual culture around them, and their role as a maker in its creation. Topics include the moving image (film, animation, television), illustrated narrative (graphic novels, picture books), interactive narratives, authorship and audience, genres and narrative spaces, music videos, and factual narratives.

This course provides a study of the major movements, schools, genres, styles, writers and works in the history of cinema. It takes an in-depth look at the meaning of the language of cinema and how it relates to the humanities. NOTE: This course is the same as FILM 104 but taught in the UC3M International School.

This course is a historical overview of Japanese cinema from its origins in 1898 to the present day. Screenings are comprised of films by Japan's most prominent directors such as Ozu Yasujirō, Kurosawa Akira, and Mizoguchi Kenji, alongside examples that reflect important trends in contemporary Japanese film. While the course addresses questions regarding genre, style, and authorship, students also work to situate these categories within the broader cultural, social, and historical currents of Japanese cinema. Topics include but are not limited to, the impact of WWII and occupation on Japanese filmmaking, the studio system, and the Japanese New Wave.