What is Cinema? Film, Art, Technology 2

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Courses / Modules / FILM1037 What is Cinema? Film, Art, Technology 2

When you'll study it: Semester 1
CATS points: 30
ECTS points: 15
Level: Level 4
Module lead: Anna Bull
Academic year: 2025-26

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
Engage critically with a range of theoretical materials, films, and cultural products
Apply this knowledge to specific moments of technological and/or aesthetic innovation

Transferable and Generic Skills

Having successfully completed this module you will be able to:

Critically analyse films and academic texts
Independently research appropriate resources
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.
Write in three distinct registers, a research report, an analytical essay and a comparative essay
Communicate effectively
Compose a competent comparison of two secondary sources.
Organise time effectively

Knowledge and Understanding

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

Demonstrate an understanding of the relationship between technology, art and film across specific historical contexts.
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.
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.

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

Resources & Reading list

General Resources

The Others. Alejandro Amenábar. 2001.

Mood Indigo. Michel Gondry, 2013.

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

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

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

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

Her. Spike Jonze, 2013.

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

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

Inception (Christopher Nolan, 2010).

Duel. Steven Spielberg. USA. Universal. 1971.

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

Textbooks

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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

Assessment

Summative

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

Breakdown
Method	Percentage contribution
Analytical essay	40%
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

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