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Module tutor: Professor Stephen Gundle

This module is designed to introduce you to the study of the history of film and the study of the relationships between history and film. It will look at key film schools and movements in world cinema history from its first decades and through the twentieth century. The module will provide a survey of a range of national cinemas and situate them in relation to specific historical moments in the history of cinema. It will explore some of the factors in the global success of Hollywood cinema in the first half of the twentieth century and examine some of the ‘new waves’ and ‘new cinemas’ which sprouted up across the globe since the post-World War Two war period. By exploring how cinematic movements are constituted and conceptualised in critical, aesthetic and political discourses, the module will aim to reflect on questions of canon formation, critical practice, the political impact of cinema, circuits of transnationalism, and modes of film production.

Suggested reading:

The module will not use a textbook but two particularly useful books you might usefully look at in advance of the start of term are:

• Kristin Thompson and David Bordwell, Film History: An Introduction, fifth edition (2022, or earlier editions).
• Geoffrey Nowell-Smith (ed.),The Oxford History of World Cinema (1996).

Module tutors: Dr Ritika Kaushik and Dr Rick Wallace

The first part of this module will introduce you to the main critical vocabularies for understanding the analysis of film form and meaning. It will offer extensive practice in developing the skills of close audiovisual film analysis.

The second part of the module will introduce you to the scholarly study of television, complementing and enriching your work on film in the first weeks; it will also equip you to follow a television-focussed strand of study through your degree, if you choose to do so.

Suggested reading:

• David Bordwell and Kristin Thompson, Film Art: An Introduction, twelfth edition (McGraw-Hill, 2020, or earlier editions). This is a useful guide to the terminology of film analysis; it has a comprehensive glossary of terms with which you should familiarise yourself as soon as possible. You can find excerpts from the book on .

• Tom Brown and James Walters (eds.) Film Moments (BFI, 2010). A fascinating anthology of readings of key moments from a broad spectrum of films. Readers in the UK can find an excerpt from the book on .

• Timothy Corrigan and Patricia White, The Film Experience: An Introduction, sixth edition (Bedford/St Martin’s, 2021, or earlier editions). A useful survey book that is best consulted in relation to Bordwell and Thompson.

• John Gibbs, Mise-en-Scène: Film Style and Interpretation (London: Wallflower, 2002. A lucid and informative introduction to this key topic for the module.

• V.F. Perkins,Film as Film: Understanding and Judging Movies (Penguin Books, 1972; De Capo Edition, 1993). An early and very influential book in film studies, written by a founding member of Film and Television Studies at Warwick.

• Jonathan Bignell, An Introduction to Television Studies, fourth edition (Routledge, 2023, or earlier editions). A very useful introductory text on television studies. Readers in the UK can find an excerpt from the book on .

• Milly Buonanno, The Age of Television: Experiences and Theories (Intellect, 2008). A good critical and historical survey of many of the key transformations in television and television studies.

• John Corner, Critical Ideas in Television Studies (Clarendon Press, 2009). A very useful introduction to key theoretical frameworks in television studies.

• Karen Lury, Interpreting Television (Hodder Arnold, 2005). An excellent introduction to the textual study of television.

Module tutor: Dr Alice Pember

The aim of this module is to introduce you to theoretical ways of thinking about film, giving you a foundational understanding of what theory is and why it is useful for film scholars. You will learn some of the major theoretical approaches that underpin and inform contemporary film studies. These approaches were originally developed in other subject areas, such as Philosophy and Psychology, and were later taken up within our discipline. We will be reading cinema through a range of these frameworks, encouraging close analysis of theoretical and critical issues in relation to specific filmic case studies. You will take another module (called Film Theory) in the Spring Term, which primarily focuses on discipline-specific theoretical debates around the moving image. The specific theories that we look at are: semiotics, ideology/Marxism, psychoanalysis, post-colonialism, queer theory, ethical theory, phenomenology/affect theory and crip theory.

Below are some suggested introductory texts that outline multiple theories and that could be useful preparation for the first half of the module.

Suggested reading:

• Richard Rushton and Gary Bettinson ‘Introduction: What is Film Theory?’, in What is Film Theory? (Open University Press, 2010). This introduction is assigned reading is Week 1. You could look at the entries for the theories listed above.
• Pam Cook, ‘Chapter 7: Developments in Theory’ inThe Cinema Book, third edition (BFI, 2007, or earlier editions). There are lots of editions of this, some available very cheaply. Look particularly at the first three sections of this chapter, on psychoanalysis/feminism and queer theory.
• Kevin McDonald ‘Chapter 3: Screen Theory’ in Film Theory: The Basics, second edition (Routledge, 2022, or earlier edition). This chapter covers many of the thinkers and approaches we will look at in the module, including psychoanalysis (Lacan), semiotics (Saussure) and ideology (Althusser).
• John Hill and Pamela Church Gibson ‘Film Text and Context: Gender, Ideology, and Identities’ in The Oxford Guide to Film Studies (Oxford University Press, 1999). Includes sections on feminist, queer theory and post-colonialism.

Module tutors: Dr Matt Denny and Dr Ritika Kaushik

This module aims to give first year students in Film Studies an introduction to a range of different visual cultures and, in particular, to proximate media forms and questions of medium specificity. We will examine a wide variety of visual media over the course of the module, including (but not limited to): still photography, comics, online videos, video games, and AI generated images. We will complicate ideas of medium specificity by identifying some of the ways in which these different media interact with one another, and consider the cross-pollination of these forms with film and television. We will also explore theories of convergence and transmedia storytelling alongside more recent concepts that have been developed to understand complex interactions that are evident between media and texts in the contemporary media landscape.

Suggested viewing:

• Scott McCloud, ‘’, TED 2005, February 2005. Scott McCloud is a key theorist for our work on comics and sequential media, and we will be reading some of his work in Week 2. In this talk, McCloud presents some of the technical vocabulary and foundational concepts we will use in our analysis of comics. Interestingly, McCloud also touches on broader concepts of the history of computing, and addresses some issues of medium specificity that will be relevant to our later work on ‘remediation’ and other key concepts.