Module: FSS5000-20 American Cinema

Level: 5

Credit Value: 20

Module Tutor: Suman Ghosh

Module Tutor Contact Details: S.Ghosh@bathspa.ac.uk

1. Brief description and aims of module:

This team-taught module offers an advanced investigation of the American film industry. The module uses Hollywood as a case study paradigm in order to introduce the advanced study of film as a commercial, cultural and aesthetic institution. The dominance of Hollywood cinema has meant that its particular formal and thematic paradigms are commonly accepted as the norm in commercial filmmaking. This module critically examines those paradigms as they operated in the classical period, and on through the post-classical Hollywood of the late 1960s to the present day. An abiding theme of the module will be one that understands film as a site of historical, cultural and theoretical debate. Through lectures, seminars, reading and screenings you will develop the theoretical, critical and analytical skills necessary for the study of film at an advanced level and for use in other modules offered in levels 5 and 6.

2.Outline syllabus:

• The Silent Era

• Classical Hollywood and the Studio System

• Post Classical Hollywood

• New Hollywood Cinema

• Narrative, Space and Time

• Film Genre

• Hollywood Auteurs

• Hollywood and the World

• Hollywood and Globalisation

• American Independent Film

3.Teaching and learning activities:

The module is taught using a combination of lectures and seminars. The lectures give a clear and comprehensive introduction to issues of key themes, and communicate the history, context and application of the relevant approaches to film. The lectures will also indicate key problematics and identity issues for further study through podcasts and screencasts of relevant material.

The seminars are structured around discussions based on examples from a broad range of films. These discussions refer to relevant critical and conceptual reading and connect the examples to both the conventions of cinematic production and the cultural influences that inform cinema as an experience created by mass production and distribution.

Assessment Item 1:

• Assessment Type: Course Work

• Description: Presentation (1500 words equivalent)

• % Weighting: 30%

Assessment Item 2:

• Assessment Type: Course Work

• Description: Research Essay (3500 words)

• % Weighting: 70%