Film & Media Studies

This course provides a concise historical overview of the Classical Hollywood studio system from the introduction of sound (1927) to the rise of New Hollywood (1967). It examines how studios controlled production, shaped genres, enforced the Hays Code, and navigated political pressures—from World War II debates to the Hollywood blacklist. Attention is given to the influence of European émigré filmmakers—such as Chaplin, Hitchcock, Lubitsch, Lang, and Wilder—alongside overlooked voices like Dorothy Arzner, Ida Lupino, and Oscar Micheaux. By revisiting recent scholarship, the course questions the idea of a unified “Classical Hollywood style” and considers how marginalized creators and genres challenge traditional definitions of the Hollywood canon.

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.

This course examines the ways in which meanings are discursively constructed in the news. It will also critically reflect and debate on issues of power relations and ideologies of the news media: the influence they exert both on our governments and major institutions as well as their ability to shape our ideas, beliefs and behaviors through the news discourse that we immerse ourselves in. Adopting a linguistic/semiotic perspective, this course offers detailed insights into the language of the news by discussing the main characteristics of news discourse and exploring theoretical frameworks to research and analyze the use of text and image in the construction of news and the manifestations of power, control and ideology in the press. 

This course teaches the art and craft of screenwriting. Students undertake a thorough investigation of plot structure and develop a sophisticated understanding of character development and theme, as well as consider other screenwriting concepts including subtext, scene design, and cinematic juxtaposition. The practical dimension of the course involve each student each writing a script for an 8-10 minute short film. Through guided writing exercises and in-class viewings, students work through a script development process that guides them from their initial conception to the completion of a fully revised script.

This course explores the use of music in Hollywood Cinema up to the present day.  The focus is on how music has worked to both support and undermine the dominant ideology of Hollywood Cinema. Students discuss the concept of the Classical Hollywood Score and how it has functioned in partnership with the Classical Hollywood Narrative. 

This course examines the evolving cultural dimensions of the digital domain. It examines moral issues, including privacy, surveillance, and hacking, as well as the political implications of our online lives. It also examines the aesthetic potential of the digital and investigates key concepts such as “virtuality,” “interactivity,” “hypertexts,” “simulation,” “cyborgs,” and “cyber-subcultures.” Media synergy and depictions of cyberculture in the cinema, literature, and other art forms will also be considered. 

This course will lead students to practice the content production and operation of all categories, all processes and all media. Students participate in the actual work of the project, master the ability of graphic writing, video production and podcast production in a real all-media environment, participate in large-scale live broadcasting and large-scale activities, carry out actual operation under the guidance of teachers, and ride the waves in the ocean of digital media. The content involved includes but is not limited to interviewing and photographing senior professors, new scholars, outstanding students and alumni, reporting campus scenery, interesting courses and lectures, campus sports activities, cultural activities, community activities, exhibition performances and so on.

This course examines seminal feature films and documentaries by such filmmakers as Perry Henzell, Humberto Solas, Euzhan Palcy, Felix de Rooy, Raoul Peck, as well as a number of new and young filmmakers, many working in video. The films will reflect the diversity of the region and its diaspora, and will include films in French, Dutch, Spanish, English and Creole. The course will explore representations of race, culture and landscape, migration and nation, as well as the impact of history, economics and politics of the region on the development of Caribbean cinema. 

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.