Film & Media Studies

The course looks at world cinema's origins and some of its more celebrated manifestations from the Indian subcontinent, Africa, East Asia, the Middle East, and Latin America, paying particular attention to the circulation of world cinema in the era of globalization. As world cinema is marketed and consumed as a hybrid form, a fusion of the national and the international, the local and the global, students consider how, for example, China's Fifth Generation and the New Iranian cinemas of the 1980s and 1990s explored ethnically specific cultures in ways that made them (and their makers) exportable and desirable abroad. 

This course surveys the history of British cinema across six decades, from the medium's origins in the 1890s to the end of the 1950s. Students will examine a wide variety of British films and genres from this period and learn to identify major trends and moments in the history of British film production, distribution, and exhibition, while investigating the ties between British cinema and Empire history. It encourages students to read such history within the broader context of the cultural debates and institutions (such as the British Film Institute) that have helped define British national cinema in this period. 

This course examines the complex articulation between cinema and country of origin in a historical perspective. It questions to what extent these country-specific categories (e.g. Italian cinema, French cinema, German cinema) not only express national specificities but also construct them. It does so in particular from the stereotypes conveyed or constructed by the films of a given period or even a given gender; stereotypes that other films can, on the contrary, attach to or have fun deconstructing. The course uses examples from French, Italian, American, and German films.

This course examines the use of digital editing for film and video projects. It covers the use of software programs such as Adobe Creative Suite to explain how to edit video files into a project and how moving images can be transformed over time in combination with text, masks, filters, effects and sound. Students will learn how to edit and master in Adobe Premiere Pro through an intensive series of tutorials film/video screenings and practical studio workshops. This will culminate in the production of a studio project.

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.