Film & Media Studies

This course examines experimentation, concept implementation, editing, camera skills, styles and concept.

This course examines the various forms of photography; explores the relationship between visual communication and art; the collaborative process between light and graphic; concepts and skills; and influences of images and trends from visual media. 

This course provides a comprehensive introduction to video games’ technological and aesthetic forms of expression, and industrial and cultural contexts. It examines how games are similar to and different from other media, what the most important developments are in game history, and what their impact is on games, game development, and society. The course considers how games can be analyzed, interpreted, and understood; how games explore, reflect, and challenge culture through representations of gender, sexuality, ethnicity, ethics, politics, and ideology; and what the central possibilities and challenges are for contemporary game industry and game culture. It discusses theories, terms, concepts, and models from game studies and game design literature. It analyzes and interprets structure, content, meaning, and interaction in different types of video games and discusses critically the game industry and game culture. The course provides an opportunity to practice the ability to convey academic and professional knowledge about video games in discussions, presentations, and in writing. The course is well suited for those who want in-depth academic and professional insights into video games as a phenomenon and field of research and wish to work with or research games further.

This course is a survey of the history and aesthetics of film music from the late 1890s to the present day. It covers the dramatic function of music as an element of cinematic narrative, the codification of musical iconography in cinematic genres, the symbolic use of pre-existing music, and the evolving musical styles of film composers.

This course offers a critical examination of the resurgence of “folk horror cinema” in British cinema since the 2000s. Based on cultural references involving neo-pagan cults, witchcraft, and a largely fantasized rewriting of the national past in terms of pre-Christian heritage, this profoundly ambiguous tradition has variously been re-appropriated by feminist as well as masculinist discourses and has given rise to a range of aesthetic propositions, from exploitation cinema to “elevated horror,” and analyzes how British and American horror cinemas have both developed a subgenre based on stories that resort to some folklore deeply engrained in a country’s traditions. Using recurring themes like religion, hostile landscapes, and supernatural creatures, these films rely on man’s deepest fears, and they may also be a means for some artists to criticize the human tendency to act in some superstitious and harmful ways.

This course considers and seeks to understand contemporary Japanese media culture and urban culture mainly from the perspective of sociology and media theory. Specifically, it examines various cultural texts and phenomena along the themes of "time," "space," and "media." The course aims to enable students to develop the basic ability to examine modern culture.

This course explores the origins of cinema in Japan and its development up to the present day. It investigates cultural influences that shaped approaches to filmmaking as well as narrative conventions and genres. The course also investigates how Japanese films have shaped foreign views of Japan and Japanese culture. Particular attention will be paid to issues and problems of film study in relation to cinema from Japan, including the construction of the “Japaneseness” of Japanese films.

In this course, students study films from the Franco regime in Spain and into the Transition to democracy. The films selected in different ways either express or subvert the ideology and iconography of Francoism. The films offer a combination of commercial and art-house cinema. Students explore issues such as the representation of gender, family, nationhood and religion, issues of censorship, ideology, iconography, and the dynamics of spectatorship. 

This course requires students to put theory into practice by cultivating a sense of the history and theory of documentary alongside the chance to make a short documentary film. The first part of the course requires students to produce a short documentary film. The second part of the course charts the historical development of documentary filmmaking through the examination of a number of case studies ranging from the early 20th century to the present day, giving further opportunity to examine the inter-relatedness of theory and practice in the work of well-known documentarists.

This course develops an intersectional understanding of gender and media research, examining the intersection of gender, sexuality, race, and class. Interrogating a broad range of media forms, it introduces key concepts within gender and media scholarship and equips students with the theoretical and methodological tools for undertaking independent research projects. Responding to key debates and events in current popular media culture, topics can include the shifting constructions of femininity, masculinity, transgender, and LGBTIQ+ subjectivities; feminist approaches to media production; industry appropriations of empowerment ideals and "woke capitalism"; and emerging trends of celebrity feminisms.