Film History. Director Strategies. Politics and Culture.

Film History:

This is a survey course. The emphasis is on the development of the technology and the stylistic use of new possibilities created by these advances.

The primary series is aimed at the First Term, but the course is repeated and varied on a six term cycle, so that over two years students have access to more than eighty film history sessions.

Director Strategies:

Each term a director or group of films is selected: a film is shown each week and analysed from the point of view of the complex pattern of directing strategies it reveals, set in the contexts of technical possibilities, the director’s other work, and the possible and impossible options presented by film, cultural and social history. Across the two years there are nearly seventy different classes.

Politics and culture:

Film as the voice of a society and its ideas, ranging from the early days of Hollywood, through global cinema in the silent and sound eras, and new cinema of the “third world”.

There are many other classes given as individual sessions, by staff or visiting lecturers, individually or as short series. Some of these are regular presentations and some take advantage of a particular specialist's availability.

During the first four weeks of term the School's Film Society plays host to a number of evening masterclass presentations of new work, classic films reconsidered and programmes of short films.

All students on the MA Filmmaking, MA Screenwriting, MA International Film Business and Phd programmes are welcome to attend Screen Studies classes.