Film Studies

Film and television don't just shape culture: they create it. Our unique 360˚ approach to cinema allows you to understand film from every angle: from stars to directors, historical origins to contemporary economics, socio-political contexts, to aesthetic achievements and from the dynamics of screenplays to the global cultures that shape production, reception and film form itself. You'll come away from the course speaking confidently about concepts and ideas, with the ability to deftly critique them, too – ideal skills for the communication industries, creative arts and beyond.

Taking this approach, you will study film and television from Hollywood and Europe, Bollywood, Asia and Latin America alongside a range of more experimental non-narrative film, television and digital media forms. Taught in partnership with the film experts in Royal Holloway’s School of Modern Languages, Literatures and Cultures, there is particular emphasis on a diverse range of European cinema.

You'll get a comprehensive grounding in the history and theory of moving image media, including the opportunity to undertake courses in screenwriting. After a grounding in the key theoretical and historical aspects of film in your first year, you can go on to explore those topics that intrigue you and capture your attention in film and television’s rich artistic, social and political traditions.

You will work with world-leading experts in European and World cinema, and award-winning practitioners from across the media industry and thrive on our creative campus – we have regular industry visitors and close contact with other arts departments and student societies.

Learn the history and theory of moving image media.

Watch and analyse films from around the world.

Study European cinema in the School of Modern Languages, Literatures and Cultures

Work with world-leading and award-winning practitioners from across the media industry.

Explore film’s artistic, social and political traditions.

Course Modules

Core Modules

Year 1

• Introduction to Media Histories 1

• Critical Theory and Textual Analysis

• Screen Narrative: Theory and Practice

• International Film 1: Contexts and Practices

• The Birth of Film

• Introduction to Media Histories 2

• Critical Theory and Creative Practice

• Screen Narrative: Theory and Practice

Year 2

• All modules are optional

Year 3

• Media Arts Dissertation

Optional Modules

Below is a taster of some of the exciting optional modules that students on the course could choose from during this academic year. Please be aware these do change over time, and optional modules may be withdrawn or new ones added.

Year 1

• All modules are core

Year 2

• Film Theory: Hitchcock and Point of View

• Post-Classical Hollywood

• Television Histories

• Modern European Cinema

• Contemporary Chinese Cinemas

• Exotic Cinema: Encounters with Cultural Difference

• Modernism and Avant Garde Film

• Beyond Bollywood: Indian Cinema in a Transitional Frame

• Digital Aesthetics

• The Creative Industries

• International Film 2: Readings and Representations

• Cinema in France

• Representations of Childhood and Youth in Modern German Culture

• 20th-Century Mexican Visual Arts and Film

• Constructing Identity in Contemporary Spanish Film

• Rebels, Revolution & Representation in Latin America

• Postwar Italian Cinema: the Auteur Tradition

Year 3

• Contemporary British Cinema 1

• Television and Digital Cultures

• Film Aesthetics 1: Issues of Interpretation and Evaluation

• Psychoanalysis and Cinema

• Film, Television and the Holocaust

• Media Technologies

• See This Sound - Audiovisuology

• Cinephilia

• 360º Cinema

• Political Cinema: From Eisenstein to Youtube

• The Poetics of Contemporary Television

• Contemporary British Cinema 2

• Film Aesthetics 2

https://www.royalholloway.ac.uk/studying-here/undergraduate/media-arts/film-studies/

You will be taught through a combination of lectures, seminars, small-group tutorials, screenings, guided independent research and study. Private study and preparation are essential parts of every course, and you will have access to many online resources and the University’s comprehensive e-learning facility, Moodle. When you start with us, you are assigned a Personal Tutor to support you academically and personally.

Assessment is carried out by written assignments, such as essays, film reviews, blogs and dissertations, as well as examinations at the end of your first year. Students also have the opportunity to write their own screenplay and, in their final year, have the chance to see this put into production by students on the BA Film, Television & Digital Production course.