Moodle@Warwick

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.

‘World cinema’ remains a highly contested category in film studies. The grouping of films from around the non-western world into this category has come to represent both the flattening impulses of a universalizing (neo)liberalism and the political potential for international coalition-building. Debates about ‘world cinema’ remind us how film-viewing plays a role in affective negotiations of global culture, international community, crisis response, and human rights. Since the term ‘world cinema’ has always simultaneously invoked industrial, generic, and aesthetic categories, our exploration of the field finds geopolitical fault lines in various critical discourses: art cinema aesthetics, humanism, neo-neorealism, the touristic gaze, and revolutionary cinema. This module examines a wide range of fictional feature films, including the work of Sara Gómez, Mati Diop, Akira Kurosawa, Samira Makhmalbaf, and Satyajit Ray, among others. By reassessing this thorny category of ‘world cinema’ in light of globalization, feminism, and black liberation, this module asks: What is cinema’s role in world-making? To whose world does cinema belong?

This module offers students the opportunity to study postcolonial film from different historical and national contexts and via a range of geopolitical and technological shifts. It will explore the changing relationship between colonialism and film through the course of the twentieth century and beyond. The module will begin by interrogating cinemas of and as Empire with an emphasis upon Anglo-American history, its ‘imperial gaze’ and neo-colonial Hollywood. It will then move on to explore various case studies of colonial, de-colonial or anti-colonial film (for example, Indian cinema or Palestinian film) and to consider key related themes such as questions of diaspora (via Accented cinema) and of the digital (via online activism).

Summary of Aims: This module explores the impact of colonialism upon national cinemas and filmmaking practices in broad terms and through detailed examples. It aims to provide a solid understanding of this well-established but still unfolding field whilst furthering students’ analytical and critical skills, allowing them to enter confidently into its debates.

Anticipated Learning Outcomes: By the end of the semester you will be able to: 

• Demonstrate in-depth knowledge of the impact of colonialism on national cinemas and filmmaking practices.

• Critically contextualise the relationship between Empire and Cinema via historical, geopolitical, technological and aesthetic concerns.

• Articulate (in verbal and written form) a critically engaged understanding of the ways in which film has reflected, reinforced, resisted or rescripted ‘Imperial’ (orientalist/racist/colonial) processes and legacies.

• Demonstrate an ability to offer nuanced and detailed analyses of film texts that enter, confidently, into postcolonial debates.

All teaching – lecture, screening and seminar – takes place in room A1.27 from 12.00-16/16.30 on Wednesdays. The one timetabled screening per week is to be supplemented by a required viewing done on the student’s own time. As well as preparing for class each week by doing the readings assigned, and trying to watch the additional films recommended, students may be asked occasionally to do some web-based informal research or ‘tasks’ for relevant sessions. All seminars (week 2-10) will include an unassessed student presentation – on the week’s topic, determined in consultation with the module leader – which will form the basis of the presenters’ first assignment, the review essay. The requirements for this will be discussed further in class. 

Please come to seminars prepared = having read and annotated assigned texts identifying any areas or ideas that were hard to follow or particularly interesting, and formulating questions in response to them and the viewings you have done, which will allow you to contribute fully to seminar discussion. 

ASSESSMENT:

One 1,000 word Review Essay – 20% Deadline:  Monday 6th April 2020

Building upon the unassessed presentation, this essay will critically evaluate the de-, post-, or anti-colonial concerns of one case study. Guidance on this provided in week 1 

One 4,000 word Essay – 80% Deadline:  Tuesday 5th May 2020

A tour of Modern Fortran (Fortran-90 and newer) for researchers writing and editing Fortran code. Assumes basic programming knowledge in any language.  

Fortran is quite a compact language, with unmatched support for multi-dimensional arrays right there in the core. This course gives a tour of almost all of Modern Fortran for those who need to use it, with lots of example code and exercises. 

Studying sociology offers insights into social and cultural issues. It helps you develop a multi-perspective and critical approach to understanding issues around culture, identity, religion, education, work and social power. More than once during the course you’re bound to ask yourself the question, “Why have we developed like this".

The W.I.F.P sociology course helps students develop a number of new skills: • How to use evidence to support your arguments • How to investigate facts and use deduction • How to put over your point of view fluently • How to work as a team to achieve results • How to take responsibility for your own learning.