Film & Media Studies

The course explores the relationships between cinematographic language and new digital technologies, investigates trends and iconographic recurrences of contemporary cinema, and creates awareness of the many ways which we read cinematic images. Students may pitch and create an audiovisual work, while developing critiquing skills. The course deepens the links between cinema and new technologies starting from the narrative, theoretical, and aesthetic modalities of contemporary digital cinema. The course also observes the historical context in which digital cinema fits. A part of the course is dedicated to the analysis of some specific symbolic orders of contemporary digital cinema and their film representation. The most significant correlations include: the film narrative and the forms of contemporary realism; the rediscovery of autobiographism; archive images and recycled cinema; the forms of hybridization and the aesthetics of video-art; the relationships between cinema space and museum space; the relationship between visible items and invisible items; the relationship between cinematic images and authenticity; and cinematic strategies used in different modes of production. The course includes the possibility to create a short audiovisual work. The course is aimed toward students studying communication and recommends a knowledge of basic topics in film and media history as a prerequisite.

This course explores and enjoys how film makers across the globe have adapted short stories into remarkable and compelling films that stand apart from the sources as works of art themselves. We will start with the stories but look at how the films go beyond fidelity to the original to create works with their own aesthetics and integrity. Films will include Akira Kurosawa's Rashomon, Stanley Kubrick's classic 2001: A Space Odyssey, Gabriel Axel's Babette's Feast, the Iranian film-maker Abbas Kiarostami's heart-warming Where is the Friend's House?, the sci-fi thriller Total Recall, and the Korean hit film Burning. All films will be viewed during class, so attendance is mandatory. 

This course analyzes key practical and theoretical elements in the cinematographic representation of the LGBTQI+ collective, in its different manifestations throughout the history of cinema. It examines the ethical and aesthetic universe of so-called queer cinema in search of its own Latin American identity.

This course offers an in-depth study of Irish cinema and television from historical, cultural, social, and economic perspectives. Spanning different cinematic and televisual genres from documentary to political thriller, and from the sitcom to reality television, students learn how Irish people and society both shape and are shaped by screen culture through an analysis of key texts. Eschewing unhelpfully narrow definitions of Irishness, this course examines the Irish experience both at home and abroad, looking at how these films and television programs shape the conception of national identity at a time of increased cultural and migration flows both into and out of Ireland (both North and South).

In this course students develop an understanding of film, television, and digital media history. They look at how and where digital media intersect and converge with these moving image forms, examining media from the late 19th century through to the present. Students consider how even "old" technologies were "new" at some point, and analyze the relationship between technological, social, and aesthetic developments in new media forms.

This course provides a diverse cinematic palette, focusing on films, filmmaking formulations and new aspects of non-Anglophone cinemas from regions outside Europe and America. Course sessions cover multifaceted aspects of cinema creation, burgeoning film movements and industry dynamics whilst also studying established and emerging filmmakers. The broad geographic stretch is combined with a specific focus on the current cinematic terrain of countries including Chile, Argentina, Senegal and South Africa. The course also investigates recent and ongoing transformations, such as the magnified visibility of female filmmakers from the Middle East and the rise of new Indian Indie cinema as a competitor to Bollywood.

This course examines images and photography to understand the role perspective plays in interpretation and meaning.

This course offers a journey through the history of cinema through the prism of the notion of auteurs. It discusses when we start talking about filmmakers and directors, how they have established themselves over time, and when the director becomes an author. The course returns to the texts and films which marked the major stages of this history. Far from accepting this terminology as a fact, it discusses and retracing its history through American and European cinematography, demonstrating to what extent this history has contributed to shaping our contemporary understanding of cinema and cinema categories still widely used by the industry and institutions. Alongside the lecture course, the tutorial sessions focus on author-filmmakers who have favored improvisation work with the actors or alternative ways of considering the classic sequence between writing a script and work of the direction during filming. It examines how everyone finds themselves unique within a true cinematographic tradition inherited from the theater. This perspective makes it possible to go beyond the categories of documentary and fiction. This course notably address the works of Mike Leigh, Lionel Rogosin, Marguerite Duras, John Cassavetes, Maurice Pialat, Nicholas Ray, and Jean-François Stevenin, as well as the contemporary works of Abdelatif Kechiche, Rabah Ameur Zaïmeche, Tariq Teguia, Jean-François Stevenin, and Charles Hue.

The course analyses all aspects of various short films and discusses how to write a short film, how to deal with the dramaturgy of the short film, and how to direct it. The course examines masterpieces created by the best directors in the history of cinema as well as contemporary ones. The course is intended for the students who are preparing their own short films but also for those, who want to understand the short film as a form.

This course offers students the opportunity to study the American commercial film industry since 1945, with an emphasis on the changes to the Hollywood mode of production in Hollywood's "post-classical" period, i.e., the decades since the collapse of the studio system in the 1950s. Individual films and filmmakers are considered in principal relation to the institutional, economic, and stylistic changes occurring at that point on Hollywood's historical evolution. Where appropriate, reference are also made to relevant historical context during this period of enormous social and political upheaval and momentous cultural change in the United States.