Module description
Without the modern cinema of the 1960s-1990s, there would be no Film Studies as we know it today. In other words, it was this phase in film history that produced many of the canonical films, national film movements, and conceptual categories by which we have come to understand the cinema as a crucial part of our culture ever since. In surveying world cinema from 1960 to the mid 1990s, this course covers key developments in national and international film culture by situating them within broader social, political, and cultural contexts. It also charts the important aesthetic and critical developments, as well as the technological and institutional factors of the era, which made film the art of its time, as well as a voice for political comment and, of course, a medium of entertainment. Attention is primarily given to feature films, but documentary and experimental films in both feature and short-film length will also be screened and considered.
The course proceeds in a roughly chronological fashion and focuses on important issues of this period, including:
- the industrial, technological, and political developments giving rise to particular film movements
- the prominence of differing national traditions of filmmaking over and against the commercial dominance of Hollywood
- the legitimation of film as an art and an object of intellectual inquiry
- the question of alternative or oppositional political or national film styles
Assessment details
- Participation [leading seminar discussion / advance questions] (10%)
- 1000 Word Essay (30%)
- 2000 Word Essay (60%)
Teaching pattern
Ten lectures, ten three-hour screenings and ten one-hour seminars.