Module Information
Course Delivery
| Delivery Type | Delivery length / details |
|---|---|
| Lecture | 10 x 2 Hour Lectures |
| Viewing | 10 x 3 Hour Viewings |
Assessment
| Assessment Type | Assessment length / details | Proportion |
|---|---|---|
| Semester Assessment | Portfolio of critical writings (2500 words) | 50% |
| Semester Assessment | Essay (3000 words) | 50% |
| Supplementary Assessment | Portfolio of critical writings (2500 words) | 50% |
| Supplementary Assessment | Essay (alternative question) (3000 words) | 50% |
Learning Outcomes
On successful completion of this module students should be able to:
1. Understand and critically engage with discourses on the concept of 'art cinema'.
2. Understand the economic and institutional factors involved in production of non-mainstream narrative cinema.
3. Make critical use of theoretical concepts such as the 'time-image' and 'cinema of poetry'.
4. Identify and contextualise particular stylistic devices associated with art cinema.
Brief description
This module introduces students to a compelling area of non-mainstream film production, commonly (but not unproblematically) referred to ‘art house cinema’. Students will be made aware of art cinema as a contested concept and of the debates surrounding its employment in describing a diverse body of works from around the world. The module aims to build a gradual understanding of various unconventional approaches to style, narrative and characterization, where linear cause and effect storytelling is rejected in favour of ambiguity and spatial and temporal dislocation. Students will thus be encouraged to consider this kind of filmmaking as a frequently inward-looking and contemplative cinema, but also as a cinema of transgression, provocation and excess, where themes of poverty, race, gender, sexuality, marginality, mental illness and violence are dealt with in brutal and uncompromising ways. Consequently, the module will also deal with the critical reception of these works and the controversy surrounding them. Directors studied include: Andrei Tarkovsky, Michelangelo Antonioni, Theo Angelopoulos, Derek Jarman, Pedro Almodóvar, Apichatpong Weerasethakul, Zia Zhang-ke, Kelly Reichardt, Jan Svankmajer, Vera Chytilova, Roy Andersson, Yorgos Lanthimos, Lars von Trier, Gaspar Noé, Gus van Sant, John Waters, Claire Denis, Michael Haneke, and Marina de Van.
Content
10 x 2 hour lecture/seminars
10 x 3 hour viewings
Week 1: What is art cinema?
Week 2: Time and Space
Week 3: Slow Cinema
Week 4: Queer
Week 5: Camp
Week 6: Realism
Week 7: Surrealism
Week 8: Violence I
Week 9: Violence II
Week 10: Circuits of distribution and exhibition
Module Skills
| Skills Type | Skills details |
|---|---|
| Application of Number | |
| Communication | * Students' written communication skills will be developed (e.g. appropriate language and style, accuracy, precision and ability to be concise). * Opportunities will be given, through seminar sessions, for students to develop confidence in using their speaking and listening skills when communicating their ideas. |
| Improving own Learning and Performance | * Students will be able to develop their skills of information location and retrieval. * Students will be given opportunities to develop effective note-taking skills. * Students will develop their critical thinking skills. * Through group discussion, students will be given opportunities to develop an awareness of the opinions of others and reconsider their initial ideas if necessary. |
| Information Technology | * Students will be given the opportunity to develop their authorial and note-taking skills when planning and preparing for the written assignment and will be encouraged to develop their note-taking skills in lectures. * Students will be given opportunities to develop their skills in searching for relevant reading and other materials (such as film reviews), through the University's Voyager Library Catalogue, the University electronic journal resource, Joey, and through the newspaper database, Lexis-Nexis. * E-mail and Blackboard will remain the main forms of communication and information sharing in this module, so students will be encoraged to actively engage in these processes. |
| Personal Development and Career planning | * Students will be given the opportunity to evaluate current knowledge and skills and set targets for self-improvement. * Students will be encouraged to take increasing responsibility for making their own learning. * Students will be encouraged to build upon the knowledge gained from lectures through developing skills in self study (supported by the general and specific reading lists and other resources distributed through the module). |
| Problem solving | Students should be able to identify tensions and debates in the field and will be encouraged to reflect critically on the process by which academics arrive at particular theoretical interpretations of particular films. |
| Research skills | * Students will be able to develop their skills of information location and retrieval (in particular through the first assessment where they are required to locate one academic piece of writing on their chosen film and then summarise its argument). * Students will be able to develop their textual analytic skills and to learn to analyse texts in a focused and purposeful manner. |
| Subject Specific Skills | See Subject Benchmark Statement for Communication, Media, Film and Cultural Studies 2008. |
| Team work | All seminar sessions will involve group work where students will be able to collaborate through discussion and then feed back their ideas to the seminar group as a whole. |
Notes
This module is at CQFW Level 5