Auteur filmmakers: case studies in cinema

Learning Outcomes

Transferable and Generic Skills

Having successfully completed this module you will be able to:

• Write effectively, accurately and critically in an appropriate academic style.
• Independently identify and locate appropriate critical resources.
• Organise your time successfully, respecting and meeting deadlines.
• Coherently and persuasively argue your ideas.

Subject Specific Intellectual and Research Skills

Having successfully completed this module you will be able to:

• Apply different theoretical models and concepts to a variety of filmic texts.
• Successfully analyse specific filmic texts, situating this analysis in aesthetic and cultural context.
• Understand and use a range of specialised terms and concepts.
• Engage critically with a range of theoretical material

Knowledge and Understanding

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

• The construction and articulation of one director’s authorial persona in the discourses around her/his films.
• The diversity and recurrence of themes, formal strategies and stylistic features styles in the work of one director;
• The industrial, socio-political and cinematic contexts in which the chosen director works;

This module selects the work of one significant filmmaker to study in depth. During the module, we will examine the films in their socio-historical and cultural settings, paying close attention to their relationship with their national and transnational contexts.

The module will begin with a brief examination of the concept of film authorship, during which you will be encouraged to engage with the idea of the auteur and what this means in the film industry. We will move on to analyse the themes, formal strategies and stylistic features of the chosen filmmaker’s work, and to consider some of the wider contexts in which it can be positioned (e.g. creative collaborators, modes of production, broader cultural trends). The industrial pressures surrounding the auteur will be investigated, in particular those of financing, distribution and exhibition, as well as the ways in which her/his authorial persona has been constructed and articulated in the discourses around her/his films (e.g. promotion, publicity, criticism and commentary).

Teaching and learning methods

Teaching methods include

• Lectures, used to introduce key themes, debates, concepts and ideas.
• Seminars, incorporating small group work and larger group discussion
• Screenings of selected films
• One-to-one consultations with tutor

Learning activities include

• Independent study, research, and viewing
• Critical thinking, reading, and writing
• Participation in seminar discussions as speaker, listener, and leader.
• Preparation of written assignments

Resources & Reading list

Journal Articles

Bordwell, David (2004). The Art Cinema as a Mode of Film Practice. Film Theory and Criticism, pp. 774-82.

Stam, Robert (1999). Interrogating Authorship and Genre. Film Theory: An Introduction, pp. 123-30.

Collins, Jim (1993). Genericity in the Nineties: Eclectic Irony and the New Sincerity. Film Theory Goes to the Movies, pp. 242-63.

Stam, Robert (2000). Part I: The Author: Introduction. Film Theory: An Anthology.

Textbooks

Gerstner, David A. and Janet Staiger, eds (2003). Authorship and film. New York: Routledge.

Wexman, Virginia Wright, ed (2003). Film and authorship. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press.

Summative

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

Referral

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

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.

Repeat Information

Repeat type: Internal & External