Film and Philosophy

Lancaster’s combined Film and Philosophy degree is taught jointly by academics in the Lancaster Institute for the Contemporary Arts and the Department of Politics, Philosophy and Religion.

Your degree aims to provide you with the information and theoretical frameworks for understanding films as crucial cultural artefacts. You’ll have the opportunity to study the aesthetic importance of cinema in the context of an increasingly visual and media-oriented culture, while investigating the connections between contemporary art, theatre, music and film. Lancaster’s course is academic rather than vocational, but you will have the opportunity at each year of the programme to make your own digital film using the University’s film equipment.

You’ll be able to select from a wide range of options in both disciplines to complement your compulsory modules, beginning with the core first-year modules Introduction to Film and Introduction to Philosophy. In your second year, your courses include Global Cinema and you’ll complete a Film Dissertation in your third year.

The first year philosophy module ‘Introduction to Philosophy' introduces students to key themes in the study of philosophy. Consciously drawing on a broad range of philosophical traditions -- Continental, Analytic, and non-Western -- it aims to present a comprehensive overview of various theoretical sub-disciplines within philosophy, but also to equip students with the ability to reason and think clearly about the most fundamental questions of human existence. The course, though designed as an introduction to the advanced degree-level study of philosophy, will also function as a self-standing introduction to philosophy suitable for those seeking to broaden their understanding of philosophy as it has been practiced throughout various traditions.’ In the second and third years you will be able to choose from a broad range of philosophy modules, including for example: Continental Philosophy, Logic and Language, and Moral Philosophy’.