Film and Screen Media (with Study Abroad) (Taught)

Our MA Film and Screen Media (with Study Abroad) explores the history, development and interaction of film, television and other screen media. You will have access to world-class postgraduate teaching and research at Birkbeck, and spend one term abroad at a leading university in Belgium, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Spain, or Canada. This is the only Master's degree in film and screen media in the UK that includes an international exchange with prestigious European and North American universities.

This course encourages you to explore a wide variety of screen media in historical, sociological, aesthetic and anthropological terms and, also, in a variety of cultural and national contexts.

You can personalise your MA studies and specialise in areas of film and screen media that match your intellectual interests and career goals, and for the study abroad element, you can choose the university with the specific strengths and specialisms that will help you develop and deepen your particular film and screen media interests. A work placement option allows you to gain practical experience that may enhance your career prospects.

You will need to have good or very good knowledge of at least one European language in order to take full advantage of this course (for Montreal this language is French). Some universities offer language instruction for Birkbeck students, to help them improve their language skills.

This course has three other pathways: MA Film and Screen Media, MA Film and Screen Media (with Television) and MA Film and Screen Media with Film Programming and Curating.

Our partner institutions

• Université Sorbonne Nouvelle-Paris 3

• Università degli Studi di Udine

• Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore di Milano

• Université de Paris Ouest Nanterre La Défense

• Université de Liège

• Ruhr Universität Bochum

• Johann Wolfgang Goethe-University Frankfurt

• Universitat Pompeu Fabra Barcelona

• Université Lille 3

• Università degli Studi Roma 3

• University of Amsterdam

• Université de Montréal

Highlights

• Teaching and supervision are delivered by leading film and media academics, including Drs Mike Allen, Janet McCabe, Silke Arnold-de Simine, Dorota Ostrowska, Emma Sandon and Michael Temple, and Professors Laura Mulvey and Ian Christie. The research expertise of our academics is in cinema history, exhibition cultures, programming and curating, film aesthetics, television industry and form, and contemporary and future new media opportunities inform every aspect of the course.

• Birkbeck was ranked as one of the top four universities in the UK for its Art and Design research in the 2021 Research Excellence Framework.

• The award-winning Birkbeck Cinema is central to this course. The 70-seat cinema is equipped with 35mm and state-of-the-art DVD projection. The Birkbeck Institute for the Moving Image (BIMI) runs a busy, intellectually stimulating programme of events, including conferences, screenings and film-related events of all kinds. You will have the opportunity to participate in and attend the Essay Film Festival, jointly run by BIMI and the Institute of Contemporary Arts (ICA), with free admission to events hosted at Birkbeck. There are practical film-making opportunities offered through the Derek Jarman Lab.

• Located in central London, in the heart of historic Bloomsbury, Birkbeck is within easy reach of cinemas and galleries, as well as facilities such as the British Film Institute and the British Library.

• We offer a number of bursaries for postgraduate students.

Careers and employability

Graduates can pursue career paths in film and television companies, museums and galleries, arts administration, education, publishing and film criticism. Possible professions include:

• arts administrator

• museum or gallery curator

• teacher

• programme researcher

• television/film/video producer.

For information about course structure and the modules you will be studying, please visit Birkbeck’s online prospectus.

During your studies at Birkbeck, you will be assessed by essay assignments of approximately 5000 words each, a research report and a dissertation of 15,000 words, due in September of the final year.

During your term abroad, the assessment will depend on the institution you attend. In most cases, it will be a mixture of essays and examinations.