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 new Cultureplex 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.
- How to Read a Film: A Beginners' Guide to CinemaCourse start date: Tue 21 Feb 2023 (and 1 other date)
Location on this date: Online (other locations are available)
Tutors: Paul SuttonThis course will develop your critical appreciation of the cinema by teaching you how to read and understand film texts. We will look at the elements that underpin film form – narrative, mise en scène, cinematography, editing and sound – alongside its historical development. We will consider film style by exploring classical, post-classical and art cinema and we will examine influential critical modes of analysis, such as genre, authorship and spectatorship.
This course will be delivered online. See the ‘What is the course about?’ section in course details for more information.Full fee £109.00 Senior fee £109.00 Concession £71.00 - The Golden Age of US Television: 1950sCourse start date: Wed 22 Feb 2023
Location on this date: Online
Tutors: Paul RixonThis course explores what, for many critics, was the first golden age of US television in the 1950s. For the critics the live anthologies drama series which appeared at this time, such as Kraft Theatre, came to offer acclaimed single plays including Marty (1953) and Twelve Angry Men (1954), by writers such as Paddy Chayefsky and Gore Vidal. For critics, these were a form of well-crafted, intense, claustrophobic television dramas. By the early 1960s these dramas had been replaced by filmed series and serials.
This course will be delivered online. See the ‘What is the course about?’ section in course details for more information.Full fee £139.00 Senior fee £139.00 Concession £90.00 - Exploring East Asian cinemaCourse start date: Wed 1 Mar 2023
Location on this date: Online
Tutors: Jon WisbeyThis course introduces you to the cinema of Japan, China, Hong Kong, South Korea, Taiwan and Thailand. We will consider the history and development of cinema in the region, its key films, filmmakers and movements, and a range of representative genres and film styles, while also thinking about its international critical reception and cultural function as both national and transnational cinema.
This course will be delivered online. See the ‘What is the course about?’ section in course details for more information.Full fee £99.00 Senior fee £99.00 Concession £64.00 - Exploring European cinemaCourse start date: Wed 26 Apr 2023
Location on this date: Online
Tutors: Jon WisbeyThis class introduces you to a range of themes and issues in European cinema, including art cinema, national cinema, movements, 'moments' and new waves, authorship, popular cinema and genre, along with key developments in European film history from the silent era to the present day, key films, directors and the canon of European cinema, and a range of critical accounts of European cinema.
This course will be delivered online. See the ‘What is the course about?’ section in course details for more information.Full fee £169.00 Senior fee £169.00 Concession £110.00 - Cultureplex Ciné-clubCourse start date: Thu 12 Jan 2023 (and 1 other date)
Location on this date: Keeley Street
Tutors: Paul SuttonCome and join us at the Cultureplex Ciné-Club, where once a week, for 12 weeks (and throughout the rest of 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.Full fee £199.00 Senior fee £199.00 Concession £129.00 - Italian cinema: From Neorealism to the Genre FilmCourse start date: Fri 28 Apr 2023
Location on this date: Keeley Street
Tutors: Cristina MassaccesiThis cinema course focuses on Italian cinema in the years between 1945 and 1980. It will provide you with an overview of the main historical, cultural and social aspects of Italian filmmaking in Italy by looking at the work of some of its most influential author/directors.Full fee £99.00 Senior fee £99.00 Concession £64.00 - From Caligari to Touch of Evil: Expressionism in the CinemaCourse start date: Fri 5 May 2023
Location on this date: Online
Tutors: Jon WisbeyCharacterised by chiaroscuro, or high contrast lighting, and similarly stylised narratives, the expressionist film informs German cinema of the 1920s, French poetic realism of the 1930s, and the American and European film noir of the 1940s and 1950s. This course explores a range of key examples of expressionist cinema drawn from these contexts and asks why the style continues to fascinate us.
This course will be delivered online. See the ‘What is the course about?’ section in course details for more information.Full fee £99.00 Senior fee £99.00 Concession £64.00 - Films and TV series of the 1990sCourse start date: Mon 8 May 2023 (and 1 other date)
Location on this date: Keeley Street
Tutors: John WischmeyerThe '90s were an amazing decade for film and pre-streaming television. Rom-com was at its height and screwball comedy was back with Pretty Woman (1990 Gerry Marshall) and Groundhog Day (1993 Harold Ramis). Audience and critical favourites were big box-office: Titanic (1997 James Cameron), Pulp Fiction (1994 Tarantino), The Silence of the Lambs (1993 Jonathan Demme), Se7en (1995 David Fincher). The ‘90s were a particularly good time for going out to the cinema when going to the movies was still a thing; or for staying in and watching quality television before box-set binging: Hill Street Blues, Seinfeld, TGIF, Green Wing, West Wing, X-Files, Bottom, Twin Peaks—and right at the end of the decade, the best-ever series—The Sopranos. If you are looking for a new decade to obsess over then register now and join us.Full fee £259.00 Senior fee £207.00 Concession £168.00 - The 2nd Golden Age of US Television: From Hill Street Blues to The SopranosCourse start date: Thu 8 Jun 2023
Location on this date: Online
Tutors: Paul RixonThis course explores the Second Golden age of American Television. While the first golden age of American television ended in the early 1960s, the second golden age, for some, started in the 1980s with the arrival of long running drama series, which used large casts to explore serious topics. For some critics, these offered a new form of quality television. Over this course we will explore why these dramas appeared, the form they took and the critical debates which came to fame them.
This course will be delivered online. See the ‘What is the course about?’ section in course details for more information.Full fee £109.00 Senior fee £109.00 Concession £71.00 - Contemporary cinema: the best films of the yearCourse start date: Mon 9 Jan 2023 (and 1 other date)
Location on this date: Keeley Street
Tutors: John WischmeyerA crucial course on contemporary/current cinema which coincides with the wide range of films released immediately before the Bafta/Oscar awards season. A weekly ‘what’s on’ previews these films and reviews films seen in the previous weeks. The first session is the drawing up of a definitive student list of the best films of the past year. This course is now more timely than ever as we continue return to cinemas and to the classroom at Keeley Street.Full fee £219.00 Senior fee £175.00 Concession £142.00 - An Introduction to the European Horror FilmCourse start date: Tue 10 Jan 2023
Location on this date: Online
Tutors: Jon WisbeyExplore European horror cinema from its origins in German Expressionism to contemporary cinemas, such as the 'new wave of French horror'. We will consider the ways in which European horror cinema both shares and 'reconfigures' the iconography of classical horror, and its tendency to stress surrealist, dreamlike qualities, all of which has encouraged a distinct set of styles and thematic concerns.
This course will be delivered online. See the ‘What is the course about?’ section in course details for more information.Full fee £99.00 Senior fee £99.00 Concession £64.00 - Independently Minded: Maverick American Filmmakers of the 1970sCourse start date: Tue 10 Jan 2023
Location on this date: Online
Tutors: Mick McAloonWhat does it mean to be a “maverick” or “difficult”? Is such a reputation a blessing or a curse – especially in Hollywood, where the definition of success is measured at the box office? This course looks at those filmmakers whose persistence (of vision) and stubbornness (of character) were often reflected in the stories they told. And it examines the way their films have endured, often against the odds.
This course will be delivered online. See the ‘What is the course about?’ section in course details for more information.Full fee £139.00 Senior fee £139.00 Concession £90.00 - The Golden Age of British TV: 1955 - 1980;Course start date: Wed 11 Jan 2023
Location on this date: Online
Tutors: Paul RixonThis course explores a golden age in British television which ran from the 1950s until the early 1980s, when acclaimed anthology series appeared, which came to attract both critical and popular praise. This included series such as Play for Today and plays such as Cathy Come Home (1966) and Rumpole of the Baily (1975). The course will reflect on the form of these anthology plays, why many thought they were part of a golden age of British television and why they eventually disappeared.
This course will be delivered online. See the ‘What is the course about?’ section in course details for more information.Full fee £99.00 Senior fee £99.00 Concession £64.00 - World cinemaCourse start date: Thu 12 Jan 2023
Location on this date: Online
Tutors: Stacey AbbottHave you ever wondered what lies beyond Hollywood? Are you interested in films from across the globe? Then this six-week introductory course is for you. We will consider alternative cinemas to the dominant North American industry and will focus each week on a selection of illustrative films from movie producing continents such as India, Asia, South America and Africa.
This course will be delivered online. See the ‘What is the course about?’ section in course details for more information.Full fee £109.00 Senior fee £109.00 Concession £71.00
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