What is Cinema? Film, Art, Technology 2

Module overview

This module addresses the question ‘What is Cinema?’ through an exploration of how cinema has converged with art and technology from its earliest manifestations to the digital forms of the present day. It traces film’s emergence and continued development through a culture of sensation and the commodification of art, leisure and entertainment in Europe and the United States. You will be introduced to key methods of understanding these developments that will deepen your knowledge of the history of cinema as an art and as an entertainment culture. Film Studies is an interdisciplinary subject, and this module seeks to develop cinema’s productive interconnection with the disciplines of literature, history, music, theatre studies, visual culture as well as the sciences. In most cases, examples of contemporary film and television will be used to deconstruct this fascinating genealogy of influence and reinvention. Through researching and examining a range of specific historical case-studies you will gain a broad understanding of the constellation of developments and discourses as well as the technologies and aesthetic practices that have helped fashion what cinema is today.

Aims and Objectives

Learning Outcomes

Subject Specific Intellectual and Research Skills

Having successfully completed this module you will be able to:

Critically research and analyse film in academic writing
Apply this knowledge to specific moments of technological and/or aesthetic innovation
Engage critically with a range of theoretical materials, films, and cultural products

Transferable and Generic Skills

Having successfully completed this module you will be able to:

Compose a competent comparison of two secondary sources.
Utilise research techniques which will allow you to develop your understanding of a range of historical contexts where cinema has converged with, or emerged from, art forms and technological developments and innovations.
Critically analyse films and academic texts
Independently research appropriate resources
Organise time effectively
Communicate effectively
Write in three distinct registers, a research report, an analytical essay and a comparative essay

Knowledge and Understanding

Having successfully completed this module, you will be able to demonstrate knowledge and understanding of:

Use selected research techniques which will allow you to develop your understanding of a range of historical contexts where cinema has converged with or emerged from art forms and technological developments.
Demonstrate an understanding of the relationship between technology, art and film across specific historical contexts.
Understand critical methods of analysis of film texts and their connections with the other arts.

Learning and Teaching

Teaching and learning methods

Teaching methods include • lectures • seminars • screenings, • specific films and fictional texts form the basis of seminars each week. Learning activities include • unassessed group presentations (usually in twos) in seminar. • a specific workshop to introduce research through on-line archives and databases.

Study time
Type	Hours
Seminar	20
Practical classes and workshops	30
Wider reading or practice	60
Revision	110
Lecture	20
Preparation for scheduled sessions	60
Total study time	300

Resources & Reading list

General Resources

Se7en. David Fincher. New Line. USA. 1995..

Duel. Steven Spielberg. USA. Universal. 1971.

Collateral. Michael Mann. Dreamworks. USA. 2004..

The Others. Alejandro Amenábar. 2001.

Waxworks/Das Wachsfigurenkabinet. Paul Leni. Neptun-Film. Ger. 1924.

Her. Spike Jonze, 2013.

Inception (Christopher Nolan, 2010).

Mood Indigo. Michel Gondry, 2013.

Letter From an Unknown Woman. Max Ophuls. Rampart. USA. 1948..

Strangers on a Train. Alfred Hitchcock. Warner. USA. 1951.

The Conversation. Franicis Ford Coppola. Zoetrope Studios. USA. 1974..

Oliver Twist. David Lean. Independent Producers. UK. 1948..

Textbooks

Sconce, Jeffrey (2000). Haunted Media: Electronic Presence from Telegraphy to Television. Durham NC: Duke University Press.

Brewster, Ben and Jacobs, Lea (1998). From Theatre to Cinema: Stage Pictorialism and Early Cinema. London: Oxford University Press.

Zielinski, Siegfried (1999). Audiovisions: Cinema and Television as Entr’actes in History, trans. Gloria Custance. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press.

Chun, Wendy Hui Kyong and Thomas Keenan, eds. (2006). New Media, Old Media: A History and Theory Reader. New York: Routledge.

Kittler, Friedrich (1999). Gramophone, Film, Typewriter, trans. Geoffrey Winthrop-Young and Michael Wultz. Stanford: Stanford University Press.

Nead, Lynda (2000). Victorian Babylon: People, Streets and Images in 19th Century London. New Haven and London: Yale University Press.

Musser, Charles (1994). The Emergence of Cinema: The American Screen to 1907. Berkeley CA: University of California Press.

Gitelman, Lisa (2006). Always Already New: Media, History, and the Data of Culture. Cambridge: The MIT Press.

Brooks, Peter (1995). The Melodramatic Imagination: Balzac, Henry James, Melodrama and the Mode of Excess. New Haven and London: Yale University Press.

Henry Jenkins (2006). Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide. New York: New York University Press.

Friedberg, Anne (2006). The Virtual Window: From Alberti to Microsoft. Cambridge: The MIT Press.

Smith, Grahame (2001). Dickens and the Dream of Cinema. Manchester: Manchester University Press.

Malin, Brenton J (2014). Feeling Mediated: A History of Media Technology and Emotion in America. New York: New York University Press.

Sterne, Jonathan (2012). MP3: The Meaning of a Format. Durham NC: Duke University Press.

Assessment

Summative

This is how we’ll formally assess what you have learned in this module.

Breakdown
Method	Percentage contribution
Essay	40%
Analytical essay	40%
Research Report	20%

Referral

This is how we’ll assess you if you don’t meet the criteria to pass this module.

Breakdown
Method	Percentage contribution
Resubmit assessments	100%

Repeat

An internal repeat is where you take all of your modules again, including any you passed. An external repeat is where you only re-take the modules you failed.

Breakdown
Method	Percentage contribution
Resubmit assessments	100%

Repeat Information

Repeat type: Internal & External