Film Studies Courses
Study online & in London

Since cinema's earliest days, literature has provided movies with stories. But there is another way of looking at film: through its relationship with painting, the oldest of the art forms.



We’ll look at paintings by Friedrich, Titian, Hopper, Bacon, Delaroche and many more. We’ll view Red Desert, Pan’s Labyrinth, Easy Rider – looking at realism, surrealism and more.



As you can see, all of these are quite different! Let’s see how movies connect us to art history.



This course will be delivered online. See the ‘What is the course about?’ section in course details for more information.

This course will introduce you to the cinema of Japan, one of the world’s most important national cinemas. It will introduce you to films by major Japanese directors, such as Kurosawa, Ozu, Mizoguchi and Kitano. It will also explore the aesthetics of these films, situating them within their broader historical, cultural, critical and industrial contexts. It will also look at the functioning of genre and the peculiarities of the star system within Japanese filmmaking.



This course will be delivered online. See the ‘What is the course about?’ section in course details for more information.

Defining itself around themes such as realism, class and national identity, British cinema continues to find critical and popular acclaim, both domestically and internationally. This course explores British cinema, past and present, through a range of critical concepts and approaches, films - including both popular and art house - and filmmakers, and considers its function as a national cinema.



This course will be delivered online. See the ‘What is the course about?’ section in course details for more information.

Hitchcock was first recognised as a gifted filmmaker in the 1920s but the films he made between 1934 and 1938, the six 'chase thrillers', established his reputation and associated him with a particular type of film, one marked by a varying mix of suspense, comedy and romance. This course explores the two most celebrated of these, looking at their production, structure and critical reception.



This course will be delivered online. See the ‘What is the course about?’ section in course details for more information.

The 1950s was the beginning of the end for the Hollywood studio era, a golden age in place since the 1920s. The fifties are more difficult to pin down than the 1930/40s due to explosive diversity in both subject matter and cinematic technology, the profound influence of WWII, the development of European neorealism and the first signs of the French New Wave. An emphasis on teen culture emerged, represented by the brief career of James Dean. Film stars became anti-heroes. The moguls who founded Hollywood began to disappear. The studio business model was doomed. Hollywood reacted both defensively and creatively, going for broke—and producing some of the finest and most enduring films in its history, films that transformed the culture, from Sunset Blvd. (1950) to Some Like It Hot (1959)—both by Billy Wilder. From The Asphalt Jungle (1950) to The Misfits (1961)— Marilyn Monroe’s first and final films, both directed by John Huston. From Here To Eternity (1953 Fred Zinnemann) to A Place in the Sun (1951 George Stevens, part of his American trilogy). Fifties’ films reflected a darkening America. (See related courses on Fifties Musicals, Melodrama and Film Noir).

Come and join us at the Cultureplex Ciné-Club 2, where once a week, for 12 weeks (and throughout the academic year), we will watch and discuss film. Taking its cue from the famous Parisian ciné-club set up by the celebrated critic and writer, André Bazin, ‘the single thinker most responsible for bestowing on cinema the prestige both of an artform and of an object of knowledge’, and the man who foresaw the emergence of film studies as a legitimate discipline of academic study, our contemporary incarnation of the film club will offer a curated series of films for detailed study, discussion and debate. Each film will be introduced, placed in both its cinematic, cultural and historic context. In sharing our viewing in City Lit’s premier screening room, the Cultureplex, we will approximate the experience of watching film in the cinema, one that is intense and fully focussed in a way that other modes of viewing often are not. After the screening we will devote the rest of the class to a collective exploration of the film, led by the tutor, but involving everyone in a participatory discussion that will allow all to express their responses, their views, their thoughts on the film screened.







Please note that this course will screen a new and different set of films to HF211 Cultureplex Ciné-Club, which will run with the same films screened last year. If you took the Cultureplex Ciné-Club course last year (2022-23), please ensure that you take the Cultureplex Ciné-Club 2 courses this year.

Come and join us at the Cultureplex Ciné-Club, where once a week, for 10 weeks, we will watch and discuss film. Each film will be introduced, placed in both its cinematic, cultural and historic context. In sharing our viewing in City Lit’s premier screening room, the Cultureplex, we will approximate the experience of watching film in the cinema, one that is intense and fully focussed in a way that other modes of viewing often are not. After the screening we will devote the rest of the class to a collective exploration of the film, led by the tutor, but involving everyone in a participatory discussion that will allow all to express their responses, their views, their thoughts on the film screened.

During the 1940s Hitchcock found himself working with a range of Hollywood studios and producers on projects suited to his particular storytelling interests, with perhaps the two most successful and striking of these being the focus of this course. We will explore their production, structure and critical reception, while also noting significant differences between the two in terms of their tone.



This course will be delivered online. See the ‘What is the course about?’ section in course details for more information.

“The more beautiful everything is, the more it will hurt without you”—Gene Kelly as An American in Paris (1951) singing to Leslie Caron. Happy endings are hard won in fifties’ musicals and The End is where they were heading. MGM was the studio of musicals in the 1950s. During this decade other studios presented only occasional musicals. The musical was big business for Hollywood in the 1950s and so was the western, so bringing them together made sense. Annie Get Your Gun had been a big success for MGM so Warner Bros. decided to get a piece of the action with Calamity Jane (1953 David Butler with Doris Day). Judy Garland was sacked by MGM in 1951, then followed Joan Crawford to Warner Brothers where she staged a big comeback in, fittingly, A Star is Born (1954 George Cukor). Oklahoma (1955 Fred Zinnemann) and Carousel (1956 Henry King) from 20th Century Fox introduced Shirley Jones. And don’t forget Leonard Bernstein’s score for On the Waterfront (1954) that anticipated West Side Story (1961). (See related courses on Fifties Melodrama and Film Noir and 50 Films From the ‘50s: Hollywood’s Last Stand).

“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.



This course will be delivered online. See the ‘What is the course about?’ section in course details for more information.

Film Noir was the term coined by French critics to describe a distinctive style in American cinema during the decade after the war. In the transitional 1950s, genres that had been Hollywood staples began to change, evolve, or fade away. Film Noir evolved because it was too vital, too useful, and just too enjoyable to fade away. Just as John Huston’s Maltese Falcon (1941) kick-started film noir in the forties, his Asphalt Jungle (1950) introduced a darker fifties’ noir. Or did noir begin and end with Orson Welles’ Citizen Kane (1941) and Touch of Evil (1958)? ((See related courses on Fifties Melodrama and Musicals and 50 Films From the ‘50s: Hollywood’s Last Stand).

Historical drama is one of the most popular movie genres. But how accurate is it, and is that important? We will look at a sample of films and TV shows set in the Tudor era of Henry VIII and Elizabeth I, to explore how the depiction of the past is presented on screen. Who are the heroes and villains, and do these depictions affect our understanding of real-life history? We’ll examine Elizabeth, The Other Boleyn Girl, Anonymous, Mary, Queen of Scots, A Man for All Seasons, and more.



This course will be delivered online. See the ‘What is the course about?’ section in course details for more information.

Explore cinema's development from its earliest days to the arrival of sound, and view and discuss films such as A Trip to the Moon (1902), Sherlock Jr. (1924) and Sunrise (1927) and many others. We will also consider the contributions of key filmmakers, including the Lumière brothers, Georges Méliès, D W Griffith, Charlie Chaplin, Buster Keaton, Sergei Eisenstein, F W Murnau and Alfred Hitchcock.



This course will be delivered online. See the ‘What is the course about?’ section in course details for more information.