How do form and style structure our experience of film? This unit provides a critical introduction to elements of film making and viewing, moving through an exploration of formal components of film to consider film aesthetics in relation to the history of film scholarship. We will consider films in a variety of cultural and historical contexts, from early cinema to youtube, and introduce a series of "case studies" to explore historical, cultural and material contexts of film production and consumption.

Examining cinema as a manifestation of modernity, this unit of study contextualizes film as commodity, industry, institution and mass production of the senses. These concepts will be explored through a study of early American cinema and the Weimar cinema of Germany. The focus is on the aesthetics of the genres of Slapstick, Melodrama, and Horror/Fantasy, studied within an understanding of the historical and industrial context of each national cinema.

1. A historical study of independent cinema, or New Wave movements in post-World War II Europe, including Italian Neo- Realism, the French New Wave and New German Cinema among others. 2. The study of Gilles Deleuze's thesis about these cinematic movements and concepts. 3. A study of the idea of Epic cinema cross-culturally so as to understand how memory is erased, sustained and created anew by film.

This unit of study will give an introduction to how film studies has analysed the meaning of a film in relation to how the film incorporates or addresses the spectator (what is known as theories of spectatorship). Commencing with debates around classical Hollywood cinema and the functioning of the point of view shot, the unit will examine how theories of spectatorship have understood the significance of different genres.

Nations are like movies: they are the result of complex imaginings. To what extent have nations been imagined through movies, and have movies been affected by national imaginings? This unit of study takes Hollywood as a starting point to examine the evolving relation of national cinemas and film genres. A national case study - for instance, Australian cinema - will be studied to identify and analyse some of the complexities of the relation of film genres and national audiences.

This unit of study will investigate the last two decades of the cinema of the USA, including Hollywood. Students will be introduced to the work of a number of established and emerging American filmmakers, to the work of a number of important film critics, and to issues concerning the theory and practice of film criticism. Critical and analytical focus will centre on the changing relation of subjectivity and time in independent cinema. Films that explore questions of subjectivity and that experiment with narrative structure will be featured.

Digital Arts explores the ways digital and new media technologies are being used to transform cultural production, distribution and reception in the visual and performing arts, film and popular culture. Students will learn about the changing aesthetic, cultural and technical dimensions of new digital technologies and will develop the critical and analytical tools with which to
discuss and evaluate digital art works and the ways that audiences interact with them.

Australian theatre and cinema have lively, at times intersecting, histories, and have played significant roles at both national and international levels, from the depiction of various local 'types' on stage and screen, to the work of Australian actors, directors and cinematographers overseas. This unit examines selected plays and films over the last century or so through a number of thematic focuses, including: race, gender and national identity; comic traditions; Australia and the world; modernity and innovation.

This unit of study introduces you to the conceptual frameworks and technologies that shape the making of screen-based media and contemporary art practices. Through a series of lectures, seminars, tutorials and screenings you will explore the evolution of experimental film, video art and independent filmmaking from the 1960s to the present. You will engage in the production of a self-directed digital film that may be realized in any style or genre. The unit is supported by a technical program that provides you with the applied skills and competencies needed for the use of studio facilities and equipment.

This unit will explore some of the most interesting and innovative theoretical, literary and multimedia texts of the last half century. Some of the topics to be explored include the relationship between modernism and postmodernism; movements, communities and subcultures; experimentalism and activism; small press publishing and independent cinema; politics, history and cultural value; genre, style and intertextuality; auteurism and the 'death of the author'.

This unit will examine issues arising from a comparative study of literature and cinema, including: the continuities and discontinuities between the two mediums; the cultural and historical contexts of literary and cinematic texts; authorship, auteurism and aesthetic authority; adaptation and intertextuality; the figurative styles of literature and cinema; narrative and narration in literature and cinema; genre study.

In this unit we will investigate aesthetic production in the United States since 9/11. Students will explore the most interesting and engaging cultural work done in the US over the last decade, focusing on diverse communities beset by war, poverty, decline, debt, and crisis. We will look at literature, film, television, radio, photography and art. Our centrepiece is a sustained consideration of the television series The Wire.

Cinema was born on the eve of a century of conflict in Europe. Celebrated as an avant-garde art form, it was also used for political propaganda and popular entertainment during the 20th century. Most recently European cinema has taken on another function, contributing to the creation of modern European identities through critical self-representation. This unit focuses on a range of recent films in order to study social and cultural change in the new Europe of the past two decades.

This unit will focus on a type of filmmaking that shows political and social awareness by depicting socio-political events, contemporary social realities in France and issues of marginality and difference. It will consider the contexts in which various trends of political films have emerged, the influence of post-war film history and contemporary events. The unit will explore issues of cinematic representation of marginality, ethnicity, sexuality and difference. Film screenings are an integral part of the course.

Using a number of significant films from across the continent of Europe, the unit examines the way in which films can both create the past and transform existing ideas about the past. The unit examines a range of different kinds of films: "historical" films which set out self-consciously to construct a version of the past as well as those in which film-makers have confronted the contemporary problems of their own society.

This unit will investigate how film stars reflect national preoccupations and how they achieve national and transnational fame. It will examine and compare several major film stars from several cultures and will analyse their star image through, for example, their on-screen performance in film adaptations, their celebrity bodies and faces and their representations in the popular media. Students will be introduced to film star theories. Students will have to attend at least 4 film screenings.

An examination of the relationship between Italian cinema and fiction. Do they speak a common language? Do they employ comparable techniques? Who copies whom? This unit investigates these and other questions by analysing the adaptation of selected contemporary Italian novels into film.

Cinema is an essential part of cultural life in Japan, which has one of the richest film traditions in the world. This unit introduces the history of Japanese cinema through lectures on important films organised according to major themes and genres. Besides weekly screenings of films, lectures will be richly illustrated with film excerpts. Students will gain an overall insight into the role of cinema in Japanese society and gain the ability to analyse films critically.

This unit will use the screening and criticism of carefully chosen classical and contemporary films to raise important philosophical questions and to contribute to our response to them. Each film screening will be paired with a key philosophical question that is explored in the film and further investigated in class: problems of freedom, human action, democracy, crime, love, otherness, marriage, conversation, selfhood, and being human. The class will also explore some central questions in the philosophy of film.

This unit analyses the position of religion in a range of films, such as the presentation of Buddhism in recent Western films (Kundun, Little Buddha, Seven Years in Tibet); the image of Christianity in 'sword and sandal' epics (Ben Hur, Quo Vadis); the role of film in familiarising Western audiences with unfamiliar religious traditions (e.g. ethnographic documentaries); and the depiction of post-modern religious concerns in science fiction (Blade Runner, The Matrix etc).

The Honours program in Film Studies consists of: 1. a thesis written under the supervision of one or more members of academic staff, 2. a seminar (What is Cinema Studies) that meets weekly for two hours for one semester 3. a workshop (Studying Fim Festivals) that meets during one semester. The thesis should be of 18000-20000 words in length. Each seminar and the workshop require 6000-8000 words of written work or its equivalent. The thesis is worth 60% of the final Honours mark and each of the seminars and workshop is worth 20%.

Refer to FILM4101

Refer to FILM4101

Refer to FILM4101