Film & Media Studies

This course explores television programming in relation to its production and cultural contexts, initially by comparing the vision and practice of early British television (in the so-called Golden Age of the 1950s/60s) with the present complexities of the international television industry and contemporary consumer culture. Students also consider how commissioning decisions are made, and how notions of "quality" and expectations of public service shift in an increasingly plural environment that includes non-broadcast provision of television programming. Lectures and seminars are supplemented by screenings of a range of programs that may be seen to reflect the broader contextual changes of industry, markets, and the public sphere. Students deepen their understanding of practical creative decision making at various levels of the broadcasting industry by researching broadcaster requirements and working on commercially viable group TV program proposals to be presented/submitted at the end of the course.

This course explores the ways in which Singapore films constitute a national cinema by considering the history and development of local film production as well as closely examining how individual films perform and engage the notion of a Singapore identity. Through a group creative project, students are challenged to make their own Singapore film that involves the practical application of critical ideas and enables students to participate in the ways that a national cinema performs and functions. The films studied may involve mature content and have varied film ratings.

This course involves the writing and analysis of screenplays. It discusses the fundamentals involved in writing a film and explores how to analyze a screenplay to build a working vocabulary for communication in the film industry.

This course introduces students to the study of film genres by focusing on historical, theoretical, and technical aspects. Through lectures, seminars, and screenings, students learn how to approach and discuss film genres analytically and acquire an awareness of the history and development of different types of film narratives and of key concepts that can be used to discuss and write about them. Students study elements that are at the basis of genre theory, such as contexts, recurring themes and patterns, locations and characters, while developing an appropriate technical vocabulary to be used in class discussions and in their assessments. 

This course explores the films made during, in between, and immediately after the two world wars. Specifically, it discusses how film can be used as a tool to better understand the wars, and how they were viewed, refuted, or supported by people at that time. It explores what is propaganda and how it is manifested in different ways. Specifically this course concerns the world wars in Europe. 

This course provides an overview of key theoretical and practical issues and debates relating to the creation, maintenance, and circulation of film archives, including topics such as collection policies and management, cataloguing access, etc. The course introduces students to a range of seminal writings in relation to the study of archives, with an emphasis on moving image archives, and draws from texts from art history, media and film theory, and archival studies. The course also explores a wide variety of practical and creative engagements with film archives, including its use by researchers, curators, festivals, filmmakers and artists, taking into account relevant practical considerations such as access, ethics, and copyright. 

This course  introduces students to contemporary European cinema. It explores some of the "blockbusters" of recent years against the backdrop of national film industries and develops the distinct and common features of a variety of films made in Europe between 1990 and the present. The following general issues are addressed: what makes a film a blockbuster; what are the dominant themes; what are the implications of filmmaking in Europe; and how does the film language differ from American blockbusters. Films to be studied may include: Boyle: TRAINSPOTTING (1996), Tykwer: RUN LOLA RUN (1998), Noe: IRREVERSIBLE (2002), Hirschbiegel: DOWNFALL (2004), Leigh: VERA DRAKE (2005), Almodovar: JULIETA (2016), Loach: I, DANIEL BLAKE (2016).

The course focuses on close examination of movement of and in the frame. The first part of the course considers the emergence of mobile vision in the 19th century and its adoption by early cinema as well as review theoretical approaches to movement in film. The second part considers narratives of travelling and displacement (travel films, road movies, exilic and diasporic cinema) and the movement of film (as a cultural object and as a commodity) across national borders.

This course offers an introduction into the core concepts of the digital age, drawing on a rich variety of disciplines. Students examine a number of concepts, including, but not limited to: technicity, affective turn, digital subjectivity and extended mind, creative expression and participation in the digital era, amateur production, Free Software, fun and politics, self-organization, media archeology, and sonic architectures. 

This course introduces to students the neglected field of avant-garde film making through a study of its development in Europe during the 1920s and ’30s and its specific relationship to the thought and practice of the modernist avant-garde in other media, especially art and literature. The emphasis is on filmmaking as a personal practice, and its relation to developments in fine art and literary practices within western culture. Content varies depending upon emerging developments in the field.