Moodle@Warwick

Welcome to the Moodle module space for Discovering Cinema 2019-20

Here you will find information about the module, including reading lists, handouts, modes of assessment, and announcements

There are also links to useful resources such as the Department of Film and Television Studies Hub, which includes guidelines and advice for writing essays and exams.

If you have any questions about the module or how this Moodle space is being used, then please email the module leader, Matt Denny (m.denny@warwick.ac.uk)

This module is intended to introduce students to the techniques and skills of textual analysis, and to develop their understanding and appreciation of cinema both past and present. It aims to introduce cinema through a range of critical lenses and frameworks, familiarising students with key formal strategies and critical concepts that are necessary for analysing films. It is designed to ensure that students are adept at examining the various visual, aural and narrative conventions by which they create meaning and how these meanings have been understood within the academic field of film studies.

The module is divided into four units across two terms. Unit one offers students various methods for developing and applying the critical vocabulary required to analyse formal elements of cinema; such as mise-en-scène, editing, staging, and composition.  Unit two shifts to consider the variety of texts covered by the term cinema, including animation, experimental film, and documentary. In the second term, the module moves on to cover key theoretical concerns in film studies, including authorship, genre, and stardom. The remaining weeks draw on the skills and knowledge acquired across the course in order to engage with key issues of politics and representation in film.

What makes a film a film? Or a television programme a television programme? How are these forms different from and similar to each other – and from related media forms like photography, video games, prints, and paintings?

In this module, you’ll explore the relationships between different types of visual media, and develop an understanding of visual cultures in a wider sense that will complement and extend your Year 1 film modules. This is also where you’ll explore the basics of television studies – a strand that you will have the option to continue as you progress through the degree.

Film & Television Criticism (Spring 2026)

This module builds on skills established in Term 1, and its aims are as follows: 

•  It aims to develop your appreciation (AKA: understanding and evaluation) of film and television texts as forms of medium-specific artistic expression.
• It aims to allow reflection upon the challenges of and best practices for attempting to articulate your appreciation for film and television in writing (AKA: film and television criticism).
• It aims to further develop your fluency in the vocabulary of audio-visual criticism so that you can describe accurately what you see and hear when you watch and listen to a film or television programme.
• It aims to give you an extensive opportunity to make reasoned and carefully argued interpretations of individual film and television texts, especially in relation to the validity of other published accounts and interpretations, both within group discussion and through your own reading of key works of film and television criticism.
• It aims to introduce to the ways in which a work of film and television criticism may also deploy a range of significant historical, cultural, social, and political contexts to inform its reading of an audio-visual text.

Module tutors:

- Ilaria Puliti (ilaria.puliti.1@warwick.ac.uk): Book feedback/advice hours via Moodle or email for alternative timings.

- Tom Hemingway (tom.p.hemingway@warwick.ac.uk)

- Dom Thornton (dom.thornton@warwick.ac.uk)

Timetable:

Mondays
Screening 1:    17:00 – 19:00*, Faculty of Arts Building (FAB0.21)

Tuesdays
Lecture:          9:00 – 10:00, Warwick Arts Centre (Screen 1)**
Screening 2:    10:00 – 12:00, Warwick Arts Centre (Screen 1)
Seminars:        13:00 – 17:00, Faculty of Arts Building (FABM0.07 & FABM0.10)

* Please note that both screenings in Week 2 and Week 5 will finish 15 minutes later than usual, at 7.15pm on Monday and at 12.15pm on Tuesday (runtime approx. 130 mins).

** In Week 2, Tuesday's lecture and screening will take place in Screen 2, instead of Screen 1.