Explore History, Culture & Writing

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 Cine-Club, which will run with the same films screened last year. If you took the Cultureplex Cine-Club course last year (2023-4), please ensure that you take the Cultureplex Cine-Club 2 courses this year.

What makes a great film? Who made it great? And who decides if it’s great? Every decade since 1952 Sight and Sound magazine has published a critics’ poll of the 100 greatest films ever made—cinema’s most influential works, as well as modern masterpieces which found immediate acclaim. This course analyses the poll and views the films and asks what makes a masterpiece? The course will also examine various means of critical analysis, including genre, authorship and spectatorship.

This supportive and interactive course for advanced children's writers will help deepen your understanding of the genre and acquire techniques to hone your writing.



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

This course on contemporary/current cinema crucially coincides with the wide variety of films released during Bafta/Oscars awards season. It provides a weekly ‘what’s on’ of new releases. The first session is a wide-ranging discussion and debate about favourite films of the past year, from which emerges a definitive student list of best films, modified as we view and review current films week-by-week. This course is now more timely than ever as we continue to support cinema-going. The course meets in City Lit’s own Cultureplex cinema at Keeley Street.

Explore the ideas of four key thinkers whose ideas have vitally shaped our world. Examine their views on morality, meaning, the role and status of women, human nature, political and economic injustice and much more.

What are the key philosophical ideas behind the issues and debates of today? This is an opportunity to explore in more depth the concepts and ideologies that are shaping the politics of the 21st century.