Film & Media Studies

This course explores the emergence and transformations of women’s cinema in Britain since the 1950s, with a focus on the contemporary period. It examines the position of women directors within the film industry (mainstream productions and art films) as well as their appropriation of genre and history.

This course surveys realism and formalism in cinema by focusing on key realist and formalist texts; leading formalist and realist filmmakers, and major realist film-making movements. The course introduces film theories and the philosophical debate between realism and formalism. The course focuses on theoretical investigation, but examines realist and formalist theories by closely observing films to which such theories are applied. 

This course looks at some of the varieties of independent cinema that have emerged from America since the early 1980s. Films by directors such as John Waters, Jim Jarmusch, David Lynch, Spike Lee, Todd Haynes, Lisa Cholodenko, and Richard Linklater, are examined both within the context of their cinematic precursors and influences, and the wider social and institutional circumstances that helped to create audiences for them.

This course focuses on the political aspects of Hollywood cinema by questioning the links that exist between the production of films and the ideological structures hidden behind the images. It discusses how genre cinema appears to be a "dream factory" whose specific economic organization is accompanied by ideological and political schemes that should be identified in the perspective of political and cultural studies. The course demonstrates how much cinema contributes to the diffusion of the traditional values of the American Dream and how the big studios manage to find a balance between submission to the commercial constraints imposed by the market, simplification of political phenomena (whether situational or systemic), and artistic research.

This course analyzes a selection of works by Western writers and film directors from 1990s to the present, with the exception of Ishiguro’s short story) which are set in East Asia and/or contain characters from East Asia. It explores the answers to the following central questions: Is the portrayal of East Asian people and cultures in each of these works fairly accurate, or is it conforming to biased existing discourses? Are there correct and incorrect ways to present East Asia in literary and cinematic works?

The course aims to apply logical reasoning to our examinations of racial and cultural issues and to learn to think for ourselves, instead of allowing existing discourses to think for us.

The aim of this lecture is to familiarize students with the various methods of media research (both quantitative and qualitative) and their theoretical backgrounds. Students may already know (and be using) some of the methods and theories, but this course aims to enlighten them of other approaches as well as the strengths and weaknesses of the various methods.

The course includes engagement with videos about media research methods as well as discussion of recent articles from media and communication journals. Students will be expected to introduce each article in class to facilitate the discussion. Students will gain an understanding of the different kinds of media research methods, as well as when, how and why they were developed. This is not a practical course so students will not be taught how to use particular methods, but this course should help them make a more informed choice of research methods for their own projects.

This course aims to familiarize students with digital video production and editing in a broad context of education. It is designed to help students learn the technology, art, pedagogy, and practices involved in effective visual storytelling. With the advancement of digital technologies, making a video program has become much easier than before. Even so, to produce a highly effective and professional video, we need to learn certain production strategies, skills, and theories. This course offers exciting opportunities to learn basic theories and technical skills through the production of high-quality short video programs, using simple devices such as a smartphone. It helps students produce video content that has high educational value in a rapidly changing media environment.

This course offers a study of concepts related to series scriptwriting including: story line, synopsis, narrative approach, and dialogue writing. It also discusses the importance of a pilot episode. Other topics include: series episode structure; differences between a feature film script and a series episode script; tv genres; pitching a series.

In this course, students use basic video and communication tools to make their own three to five minute film related to the independent research project (BIO 188: Research Practicum). Through lectures and hands-on exercise, this course offers a study of story-telling, story boards, sound-recording, filming, copyrights, and editing. Students work closely with the film instructor and the advisor of their research project to produce their films. Final films are shown publicly during the homestay family lunch or symposium.

This course examines aspects of the historical and contemporary development of film form. In the first half of the term, it looks at crosscutting and continuity editing in films by D.W. Griffith, Alfred Hitchcock, and Christopher Nolan. In the second half it studies discontinuity and montage in various films, including work by Sergei Eisenstein, Dziga Vertov, Jean-Luc Godard, and Isiah Medina. Students are also introduced to basic editing software and the final assessment is in the form of a video essay.