Film Studies Courses
Study online & in London
Enjoy a fresh look at big screen classics, ground-breaking titles and cult favourites featuring a cast of iconic names, former stars and the men and women who called the shots.
Check out our blog post on our Ciné-Club, where once a week, for 12 weeks (and throughout the academic year in terms 2 and 3), we will watch and discuss film.
Study in-person, or online from the comfort of home, with classes that allow you to participate in discussions with fellow adult students and share your passion for Film as part of a learning community. We offer daytime, evening and weekend courses, both short and long. Our tutors are experts in their fields and experienced educators. Tutors share their knowledge and passion for Film through presentations, screenings, interactive discussion, analysis, and other activities.
Many students return to take more courses, telling us they enjoy being part of our City Lit literary community. Our popular courses often sell out quickly, so we invite you to browse and book your place now.
Filters
- Hitchcock in the 50s: A golden run
Course start date: Sat 31 May 2025Location on this date: Keeley Street
Tutors: John WischmeyerAlfred Hitchcock (b.1899) is responsible for some of the most influential films in cinema history. He directed over 50 feature films throughout his career (11 in the 1950s) as well as hosting and directing the TV series Alfred Hitchcock Presents (1955-61). He peaked in the fifties, when he hit his own fifties. Instead of a mid-life crisis he had his most productive period ever and received the official title of the "Master of Suspense”. Just before this he had hit the buffers from 1947 to 1951 with one failure after another but turned things around when he went to Warner Brothers for Strangers on a Train (1951) and then, fortuitously, to Paramount for a golden run of hits from Rear Window (1954) to Psycho (1960). The French declared him an auteur—an artist. The fifties are his late, mature period and these are his most personal and revealing films. Vertigo (1958) was his autobiography.Full fee £69.00 Senior fee £55.00 Concession £45.00 - Masters of Cinema: Céline SciammaCourse start date: Sat 14 Jun 2025
Location on this date: Keeley Street
Tutors: Karine ChevalierThis one day course will consider Celine Sciamma’s importance as a filmmaker by exploring in some detail a number of her key films from her debut Water Lillies (2007), to films such as Tomboy (2011), her breakthrough Girlhood (2014), and her more recent popular successes Portrait of a Lady on Fire (2019) and Petite Maman (2021).
Dr Karine Chevalier is a lecturer in Film studies. She is also a filmmaker. Her main research interests lie in the field of Transnational Cinema, French and Francophone Cinema, Visual Arts and Aesthetics, Postcolonial Studies, Intermediality, as well as Screenwriting and Filmmaking, with a specific focus on Violence and Resilience, Creative Voices, Digital Storytelling and Multiscreens, Alterities and Minorities, Moving (auto)Portraits and Masks.Full fee £69.00 Senior fee £55.00 Concession £45.00 - What is cinema?Course start date: Sat 28 Jun 2025
Location on this date: Keeley Street
Tutors: Paul SuttonNowadays there are so many ways to watch film - smart phones, tablets, TVs - just as there are so many different spaces in which we encounter the moving image - cinemas, galleries, our homes, to name but a few. This day-long course will broaden and deepen your critical awareness of the diverse formal and experiential possibilities of cinema, both as they have developed in the past and as they are transforming in the contemporary moment. It will do this by reflecting on two questions: ‘what is cinema?’ and ‘where is cinema?’.Full fee £69.00 Senior fee £55.00 Concession £45.00 - Film studies taster Course start date: Sat 15 Nov 2025 (and 2 other dates)
Location on this date: Keeley Street
Tutors: Paul SuttonLearn how to evaluate and discuss films while enjoying a working example of a City Lit Film Studies class. In this class we will view and explore clips from a number of films, including popular remakes, enabling us to consider and compare themes and techniques from differing filmmaking countries. There will be a chance to review – in brief – film courses at City Lit (January - March 2026).Full fee £19.00 Senior fee £15.00 Concession £12.00 - Masters of Cinema: Claire DenisCourse start date: Sat 4 Oct 2025
Location on this date: Keeley Street
This course will consider Claire Denis’ importance as a filmmaker by exploring in some detail a number of her key films from Chocolat (1988), I can’t sleep (1994), Beau Travail (1999), White material (2009), and High Life (2018). Claire Denis’ transnational postcolonial work, from Djibouti, South Africa to multi-ethnic France, deals with themes of migration, human desires and fears. Her films are renowned for being filmed mainly on location, for playing with many cinematic genres and languages and they are internationally acclaimed.Full fee £69.00 Senior fee £55.00 Concession £45.00 - Nordic Noir: Novel, Film, TelevisionCourse start date: Sat 18 Oct 2025
Location on this date: Keeley Street
Tutors: Paul SuttonThe early 2000s saw the emergence of a number of Swedish and Norwegian crime series onto UK TV screens, including Wallander (dir. various, 2005-10), Forbrydelsen/The Killing (dir. Various, 2007), Borgen (dir. various 2010) and The Bridge (dir. various 2011), all broadcast on BBC4. The popularity of these dramas led to one critic to refer to them as ‘Nordic noir, the gift that keeps on giving’. Similarly successful were the film adaptations of Stieg Larsson’s hugely popular Millenium trilogy, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (2009 and 2011), The Girl who Played with Fire (2009) and The Girl who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest (2009). This one-day course will explore the history, context, development and reception of these TV dramas and films while also considering the various processes of adaptation and remaking involved in their production.Full fee £69.00 Senior fee £55.00 Concession £45.00 - British Studios: Ealing to PinewoodCourse start date: Sat 25 Oct 2025
Location on this date: Keeley Street
Tutors: John WischmeyerIt's rare for a film studio to inspire affection. The giants of Hollywood (Warner Bros, Fox or Paramount) or Britain (Rank/Pinewood, Elstree) might be admired, but not loved. Ealing Studios was loved, and still is, well over half a century since its heyday. Pinewood—now known as the James Bond studio (see HF233 British Bond: James Bond in Cinema, 21st February 2026)—was built by J. Arthur Rank in 1936 and merged with Shepperton Studios in 2001 to become one of the technically advanced studios in the British film industry. Join us as we explore the history of these key British studios from their inception to the present day.Full fee £69.00 Senior fee £55.00 Concession £45.00 - Remaking the Screen Vampire: from Nosferatu (1922) to Nosferatu (2024)Course start date: Sat 1 Nov 2025
Location on this date: Keeley Street
Tutors: Paul SuttonF. W. Murnau’s Nosferatu: A Symphony of Horror (1922) is acknowledged as one of the all-time greats of cinema, expressing as one critic describes it, the ‘poetry of fear’ and as one of the first feature length vampire films it’s influence, and legacy has been widely felt. Robert Eggers’ recent remake Nosferatu (2024), comes just over one hundred years after Murnau's film and marks one of the most recent instalments in a genre that continues to renew itself for each generation of film viewers. Exploring a range of key vampire films from across this century of cinema, this course will explore why the vampire film remains such a popular sub-genre of the horror film and it will consider why it continues to exercise such power over its spectators.Full fee £79.00 Senior fee £63.00 Concession £51.00 - An introduction to Japanese anime: history, genres and authorsCourse start date: Sat 22 Nov 2025
Location on this date: Keeley Street
Tutors: Cristina MassaccesiWhat is anime? What are the artistic and narrative features that make these films so instantly recognizable? This one-day film course will provide an overview of the history of Japanese animation cinema, its inextricable links with manga and its multi-faceted and varied productions that range from children’s films to genres such as cyberpunk and yaoi. During the course, we will watch and discuss clips from a variety of production companies and directors, such as Miyazaki Hayao, Mushi Pro and Kon Satoshi.Full fee £69.00 Senior fee £55.00 Concession £45.00 - Masters of cinema: Wes AndersonCourse start date: Sat 29 Nov 2025
Location on this date: Keeley Street
Tutors: Graham Rinaldi“I have a way of filming things and staging them and designing sets. There were times when I thought I should change my approach but in fact, this is what I like to do. It’s sort of like my handwriting as a movie director.” Explore the signature style and adventurous cinema of Wes Anderson from coming of age films through stop motion animation to comedy dramas.Full fee £69.00 Senior fee £55.00 Concession £45.00 - Early English Hitchcock: From The Lodger to The Lady VanishesCourse start date: Sat 6 Dec 2025
Location on this date: Keeley Street
Tutors: John WischmeyerIf ‘Hitchcock’ is a body of work spanning fifty years and more than fifty films, then ‘English Hitchcock’ comprises the first section of that work: 23 feature films made before his departure for Hollywood in 1939. His English period is the gradual and delightful process of his becoming the ‘Hitchcock’ we all think we know, from The Lodger (1927) to The Lady Vanishes (1937). Join us in City Lit’s Cultureplex as we examine this exciting and perhaps less well-known period of Hitchcock’s career.Full fee £69.00 Senior fee £55.00 Concession £45.00 - Christmas at the cinemaCourse start date: Sat 13 Dec 2025
Location on this date: Keeley Street
Tutors: John WischmeyerCarefully-curated Christmas cornucopia overflows with seasonal films, from new entry The Holdovers (2023 Alexander Payne) to Home Alone (1990 Chris Columbus/John Hughes). This is a celebration of the genre of the Christmas film packed with clips and hidden gems: Scrooge (1951 Brian Desmond Hurst) remixed as a film noir, Lindsay Anderson’s Every Day Except Christmas (1957), his film about the old Covent Garden market later seen in My Fair Lady (1964) or Hitchcock’s Frenzy (1972) just before it closed down. Full of delights, discussions and a grown man dressed as an Elf (2003).Full fee £69.00 Senior fee £55.00 Concession £45.00
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