Undergraduate Film And Visual Culture 2017-2018

What is Visual Culture? Over the last twenty years, the visual landscape has become digital, virtual, viral, and global. A vibrant cross-section of scholars and practitioners from Art History, Critical Theory, Cultural Studies, Anthropology, and Film Studies have responded, not only engaging contemporary image production and consumption, but also the foundations of visual knowledge: What is an image? What is vision? How and why do we look, gaze, and spectate? From the nomadic pathways of the digital archive to the embodied look that looks back, this course will introduce students to the key concepts that shape this fluid field.

This course offers an introduction to the language and practice of formal film analysis. Each week we will explore a different element of film form and analyze the ways in which it shapes the moving image.This course invites students to think about formal elements within and across a wide range of genres, styles, historical moments, and national contexts. By the end of this course, the successful FS1006 student will be able to recognize and communicate the ways in which meaning is made in cinema.

The first half of a film history sequence at the second year level, Cinema & Modernity focuses on crucial moments, concepts and cinematic works from the period 1895 to 1945. Students will be marked according to a mid-term essay, a final exam, short assignments on Blackboard, and attendance in lectures and tutorials.

The second half of a film history sequence at the second year level, Cinema & Revolution focuses on crucial moments, concepts and cinematic works from the period between 1945 and the present. Students will be marked according to a mid-term essay, a final exam, short assignments on Blackboard, and participation and attendance in lectures and tutorials. 

The course will invite students to explore the relationship between cinema and science beyond the paradigm of science fiction cinema. Underground and mainstream fictional, documentary and educational moving image works will serve the discussion of both theoretical and practical questions at the crossroad of film theory, visual culture and science and technology studies (STS).

The course will engage students with a wide range of experimental, documentary, educational and narrative works such as, among others, films by Brackage, Painlevè, Wiseman, Guzmán, Herzog, Rotha, Malick.

This practice-based course will investigate different forms of narrative construction in paintings, photographs and films by different artists from a range of historical periods.  Narrative form and content will be considered from aesthetic, historical and theoretical perspectives.  Working in groups, students will explore approaches to still and moving image making that will culminate in creating a video installation project.

This course will examine the phenomenon of performance art as it developed both in the capitalist West and the communist East. By considering the artistic production of Western artists in light of what their contemporaries were doing behind the Iron Curtain, we will arrive at a more nuanced understanding of performance art in general, and in the West. Furthermore, by examining these performances from the East in the context of theories expounded on the avant-garde, we will reconsider the idea of the end of the avant-garde and develop an expanded understanding of postmodern art practice.

Transnational Cinematic Childhoods

Cinematic representations of children and childhood are simultaneously romanticised and fraught with tensions. Are children inherently innocent? The dead, queer, absent and precocious children depicted in the films studied on this course challenge such a notion. This cross-disciplinary course undertakes an analysis of the ways in which childhood is constructed cinematically and transnationally. Case studies are largely drawn from Hispanic contexts and include The Spirit of the Beehive (1973), The Others (2001) and Pan’s Labyrinth (2006).

This course will allow students to engage in documentary production by putting into practice methodologies they have studied through a series of seminar discussions, workshops and screenings. Students will research two topics (one assessed and one non-assessed) and work in teams to film them and utilize the Media Lab's facilities to complete the projects through post-production.

This course will study contemporary film with reference to both Spanish references and global currents. Spanish artistic production, like all culture, is increasingly tuned into international circuits, where filmmakers find material and inspiration for their creations from a wide range of settings. Therefore, we will think of Spain as a crossroads, a meeting ground of different historical influences, connected to a global network of migrations and communications. In our readings of these films, we will ask how personal and collective subjectivity is defined in relation to both local and global contexts.

This course will introduce students to the major artists and artistic movements in Russia from the late 19th century until today. The main focus will be on the interrelation between art and politics in Russia during one of the most turbulent centuries in the country's history. From the social realism of the Wanderers to the propaganda art of Klucis and Rodchenko, through the Soviet years of repression and into the post-independent era, when artists continued to express their concerns about topical issues, art and politics in Russia have been virtually inextricable.

This course shall invite students to explore the relationship between cinema and science beyond the paradigm of science fiction cinema. Underground and mainstream fictional, documentary and educational moving image works will serve the discussion of both theoretical and practical questions at the crossroad of film theory, visual culture and science and technology studies (STS).

The course will engage students with a wide range of experimental, documentary, educational and narrative works such as, among others, films by Brackage, Painlevè, Wiseman, Guzmán, Herzog, Rotha, Malick.

This practice-based course will investigate different forms of narrative construction in paintings, photographs and films by different artists from a range of historical periods.  Narrative form and content will be considered from aesthetic, historical and theoretical perspectives.  Working in groups, students will explore approaches to still and moving image making that will culminate in creating a video installation project.

This course will examine the phenomenon of performance art as it developed both in the capitalist West and the communist East. By considering the artistic production of Western artists in light of what their contemporaries were doing behind the Iron Curtain, we will arrive at a more nuanced understanding of performance art in general, and in the West. Furthermore, by examining these performances from the East in the context of theories expounded on the avant-garde, we will reconsider the idea of the end of the avant-garde and develop an expanded understanding of postmodern art practice.

This course will provide students with guidance on writing a dissertation on a topic approved by the programme co-ordinator for the Head of School.

Transnational Cinematic Childhoods

Cinematic representations of children and childhood are simultaneously romanticised and fraught with tensions. Are children inherently innocent? The dead, queer, absent and precocious children depicted in the films studied on this course challenge such a notion. This cross-disciplinary course undertakes an analysis of the ways in which childhood is constructed cinematically and transnationally. Case studies are largely drawn from Hispanic contexts and include The Spirit of the Beehive (1973), The Others (2001) and Pan’s Labyrinth (2006).

This course will allow students to engage in documentary production by putting into practice methodologies they have studied through a series of seminar discussions, workshops and screenings. Students will research two topics (one assessed and one non-assessed) and work in teams to film them and utilize the Media Lab's facilities to complete the projects through post-production.

This course will study contemporary film with reference to both Spanish references and global currents. Spanish artistic production, like all culture, is increasingly tuned into international circuits, where filmmakers find material and inspiration for their creations from a wide range of settings. Therefore, we will think of Spain as a crossroads, a meeting ground of different historical influences, connected to a global network of migrations and communications. In our readings of these films, we will ask how personal and collective subjectivity is defined in relation to both local and global contexts.

This course will introduce students to the major artists and artistic movements in Russia from the late 19th century until today. The main focus will be on the interrelation between art and politics in Russia during one of the most turbulent centuries in the country's history. From the social realism of the Wanderers to the propaganda art of Klucis and Rodchenko, through the Soviet years of repression and into the post-independent era, when artists continued to express their concerns about topical issues, art and politics in Russia have been virtually inextricable.