Film & Media Studies

The focus of this course is upon representations of the links between the British Empire and colonialism from the 1930s to the present time in colonial and postcolonial cinema. Students explore a variety of perspectives, from postcolonial studies to gender and cultural studies, in order to examine how the empire film relies on figures and stereotypes that the cinemas of decolonization and the diasporas re-appropriate through strategies of irony and subversion. Students study the way the identification of the nation to gendered figures informs narratives and representations and how female directors have offered alternative discourses in various contexts of production.

This course analyzes different photographic genres and the history of the evolution of photography from its uses in art and media. It looks at the technical aspects of different styles such as documentary and humanist photography, as well as how photography captures different motives such as urban spaces, cultural and natural landscapes, war, natural disasters, and portraits.  

This course offers students an introduction to the terms, ideas and craft, involved in the creation of screenplays. Students explore the conventions of dramatic structure, new narrative forms, and short film variations. They are encouraged to think critically about screenplay writing and have an opportunity to write their own screenplay. The course does not aim to provide vocational training for students wishing to pursue careers in the feature film or television industries.

This course examines the study of Australian film and television. Beginning with post-war Australian film and television, it will trace the emergence of the modern entertainment industry in Australia locating it within national and international frameworks and examining the growing debates around what constitutes a national cinema and television industry. The focus will be upon examining specific films and a range of media in television locating products within local and global contexts, analyzing cosmopolitan and nationalist impulses that drive the industry forward. It covers a range of indigenous and non-indigenous products and genres including feature films, video, documentaries, television series, sitcoms and news programs. Road movies, comedy, history films, animation, romance and melodrama are among the genres studied.

Community art involves all arts disciplines and can be found in all corners of the world: in immigrant working-class areas, in prisons, in rural communities, in (former) war zones, etc. In the Netherlands, for example, it is a rapidly expanding field that operates mostly, but not exclusively, outside of the mainstream or avant-garde. Because it challenges traditional notions of (autonomous) artmaking, community art reconfigures existing art theory and criticism in an attempt to validate itself both socially and culturally. This course provides a critical introduction to the practical and theoretical dimensions of community arts. As small, multilingual research teams, students conduct fieldwork in ongoing community arts projects in Utrecht or elsewhere in the Netherlands, film their results, and present this video to the class.

This course offers an introduction to fiction videomaking. Topics include: framing; mise-en-scene and framing; cinematography; digital camera and sound equipment advanced functions and techniques; editing; sound; shot and reserve shot; script; shooting and editing of a final project.