Film & Media Studies

This course introduces the craft and theory of documentary storytelling. Students learn how to create powerful 5-minute documentary films that respond creatively to a set brief. Students develop their own narrative and filmmaking approach through practical and theoretical instruction in the tools and techniques of digital film production. These include principles of camera and sound, interviews and narration, multi-media archival research and use, editing with Adobe Premiere and lo-fi graphics and animation. These practical creative skills are developed alongside a critical investigation of documentary technique and the art and ethics of storytelling.

This course explores key concepts and theories in media, communication, and cultural studies to connect them to matters of cultural politics and power. It focuses on language and how it is used to represent the world we live in. The course covers semiotics, discourse, power/knowledge, speech act theory, performativity, and queer theory. Using these theoretical/methodological perspectives, it critically examines media representations of gender, sexuality, race, and nation.  

This course focuses on understanding how photojournalism contributes to the news landscape and how images shape our comprehension of current affairs and history. The course looks at images from contemporary events as well as studying the history of photojournalism and its different fields of engagement in order to give context for its role today. The course also focuses on how Artificial Intelligence is changing the game for the viewers as well as the professional photographers. It discusses questions such as what makes us an ethical photojournalist? Are there ways we should act while covering stories worldwide? Is it always appropriate to make an image or are there times when a conversation needs to happen first? What messages are we trying to convey through our photographs? How do we remain transparent and inclusive as photographers while working in the field?

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.