Film and Screen Studies (Taught)

This programme in Film and Screen Studies offers a unique combination of critical and creative approaches to the past and the future of audiovisual media.

Film and Screen Studies will equip you with skills and knowledge to address current transformations of moving image media in a globalised world, from the media in your pocket to architectural screens. It explores both the old and the new, philosophy and history, theory and practice, so as to help you understand the challenges of the 21st century's culture of moving images, changing artistic and political contexts as well as ever-developing technologies.

Learn from the experts
What distinguishes this Film and Screen Studies course is its innovative approach to learning and research. It takes you well beyond the borders of traditional film studies. It encourages you to think critically and imaginatively, across media forms, disciplinary boundaries as well as conceptual and creative work. The Media Arts pathway gives you the opportunity to submit some work in non-traditional forms.

Teaching draws on the diverse research strengths of the globally renowned academics at one of the world's leading media communications, and cultural studies departments, which also has strong traditions in audiovisual practice. You'll be taught by scholars of international standing who have expertise in the interface between film criticism and creation; new screen technologies; in early cinema and the media archaeology of modernity; in artist’s film; and in non-fiction film (eg documentary and avant-garde).

The Department of Media, Communications and Cultural Studies has been ranked 2nd in the UK for 'world-leading or internationally excellent' research (Research Excellence Framework, 2021) and 12th in the world (2nd in the UK) in the 2022 QS World Rankings for communication and media studies.

Choose a pathway

Media Arts Pathway
The most intense and extreme forms of media, experimental media arts, test to breaking point our established ideas and practices. From wild abstraction and surrealist visions to activist and community arts, they ask the profoundest questions about high art and popular culture, the individual and the social, meaning and beauty. This pathway explores these emerging experimental practices of image-making and criticism. You will be encouraged not just to study but to curate and critique past, present, and future media arts by building exhibitions and visual essays of their own. Short practical workshops will enable you to make the most of the skills you bring into the programme.

Moving Image Studies Pathway
The moving image media today are a concentrated form of culture, ideas, socialisation, wealth and power. 21st-century globalisation, ecology, migration and activism fight over and through them. How have the media built on, distorted and abandoned their past? How are they trying to destroy, deny or build the future? This pathway explores new critical approaches that address the currency of moving image media in today's global context – their aesthetics, technology and politics. It seeks to extend the boundaries for studying moving images by considering a wider range of media and introducing students to a wider range of approaches for investigating moving images' past and present.

The modules you will study on this programme depend on your chosen pathway.

Compulsory modules (Media Arts)
Archaeology of the Moving Image 30 credits or 15 credits
Experimental Media 30 credits or 15 credits

Compulsory modules (Moving Image Studies)
Archaeology of the Moving Image 30 credits or 15 credits
Politics of the Audiovisual 30 credits or 15 credits

Please note that due to staff research commitments not all of these modules may be available every year.