Module: FSS6100-20 European Cinema

Credit Value: 20

Module Tutor: Stephen Manley

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

1. Brief description and aims of module:

European Cinema offers you an opportunity to study in depth some of the key movements and moments in Europe’s extraordinarily rich and varied cinematic culture. Themes such as European and national identity, aesthetics and politics, the avant-garde, realism and anti-realism, modernism and post-modernism, will be explored in relation to a range of cinemas. The module relates film to questions of identity in relation to local, national, and international contexts, and considers the ways in which film aesthetics respond to cultural, economic and political forces. European cinema's origins and subsequent development - often as the self-conscious antithesis of the 'Hollywood' style - will be considered, as will its current status within an increasingly globalised cultural arena.

2.Outline syllabus:

Session titles include: What is European Cinema?; A Cinema of Auteurs; Popular Traditions in European Cinema; Modernism, Modernity & the Avant Garde; Italian Neo-Realism; The French New Wave, British Realism, Dogme 95; Anti-Realism; Postmodernity and Postmodernism in European Cinema; Contemporary Issues.

3.Teaching and learning activities:

The module is organised around a pattern of 2 hour sessions, comprising a lecture, and a follow-up seminar / workshop. Lectures will introduce module topics, concepts, and debates. These have been grouped into broadly thematic sections: ‘Definitions’, ‘Modernity, Modernism & the avant-garde’, ‘Realism and Anti-Realism’, and ‘Postmodernism’. These overarching themes will provide contextual and analytical frameworks within which a wide variety of films and texts can be explored and understood. Short film clips will be used to illustrate key issues, concepts and themes. Seminar sessions will provide a forum for discussion of themes / issues / debates raised in the lectures, in the set weekly reading and by the screenings of film extract(s). The latter will provide ‘case studies’ of the topic / theme for the week.

Assessment Item 1:

• Assessment Type: CW

• Description: Contextual Analysis of a contemporary European film (1250 words)

• % Weighting: 25

Assessment Item 2:

• Assessment Type: CW

• Description: Essay (3750 words)

• % Weighting: 75