Film Studies Courses
Study online & in London

When you choose a film to watch you are choosing a genre (if not a star) for an idea of what to expect: Action (Die Hard, F1), Horror (Psycho, Bring Her Back), Sci-Fi (Star Wars, Avatar), Film Noir (Double Indemnity, Destroyer), Westerns (Stagecoach, Eddington), Musicals (Singin' in the Rain, Kneecap), or Fantasy (The Lord of the Rings, Begonia). Genre links storytelling to themes, to style-and to the audience. Genre is the invisible architecture of cinema, shaping audience expectations, guiding narrative choices, and influencing everything from set and costume design to music score. From Hitchcockian suspense to Anderson’s fantasy adventures: cinematic genres define the filmmaking landscape and influence the cultural zeitgeist because genres are never static, having evolved through the history of cinema by pushing boundaries and altering the way stories get told. Genre is used from first ‘pitch’ to final marketing and subsequent film reviews. Genre is the key that unlocks the studio system and fulfils audience desire. Which genres are most popular now? On this course each week we’ll view a different genre-and that’s entertainment!

We all recognise film as a potentially immensely powerful medium; many of us will have undoubtedly wept in sorrow or trembled in fear when watching films that have moved us or frightened us. There are times when something, a moment or moments from a film stay with us beyond the duration of its screening; it may be that we experience these almost immediately or it might be that this something emerges days later. This course aims to explore the film moment as a particularly powerful effect (and affect) of the film viewing experience by examining a moment or moments from a specific film and exploring it/them in the context of the entire film. We tend to think of a film in terms of its entire narrative, its full running time, but the ‘moment’, the thing that resonates and reverberates afterwards can be just as important, possibly more so as this course aims to consider. Each two hour Film Moments course will explore moments specific to a film or films that will be revealed at the start of each course; there will also be the opportunity to examine and discuss your own film moments…

In this Ciné Club we will delve into unsettling landscape of folk horror films and consider how this genre, which is having a renaissance today, comes to bear on broader questions about human identity and culture.

Through a selection of films that reflect both canonical classics of the genre, and innovative re-tellings, we will the explore th evolution and surging popularity of folk horror in the twenty-first century, focusing on the ways in which filmmakers continue to redefine the genre or and re-invent common archetypes.

Possible films might include:

- The Wicker Man (Robin Hardy, 1973)
- A Field in England (Ben Wheatley, 2013)
- Midsommar (Ari Aster, 2019)
- You Are Not My Mother (Kate Dolan, 2021)
- Lamb (Valdimar Jóhannsson 2021)
- Starve Acre (Daniel Kokotajlo, 2023)

Perfect for cinephiles, horror fans, and anyone curious about the way that folklore evolves and aquires new forms in the modern world.

Come and join us at the Cultureplex Ciné-Club, 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 the films screened in this year’s Ciné-Club 2 are a repeat of last year's Ciné-Club (Autumn), so if you attended in 2025-6 you should look for HF211 Culturplex Ciné-Club (Autumn) which runs on Tuesday afternoons and consists of an entirely new suite of films.

In the 1930s, audiences were introduced to a new type of comedy style blending Hollywood social commentary with a battle-of-the-sexes. What was new? Eccentric romance, rapid-fire dialogue, gender relations as near combat, and farcical slapstick-a cycle of films known as screwball comedies, a distinct time capsule of the decade and one of the most transcendent genres of the classical Hollywood period. More modern films like the homage of What’s Up Doc? (1972 Peter Bogdanovich) or Silver Linings Playbook (2012 David O. Russell) attempted the speed & spirit of films like Bringing Up Baby (1938 Howard Hawks) or The Lady Eve (1941 Preston Sturges) but screwball’s effervescence is difficult to recapture. In O Brother, Where Art Thou? (2000) the Coen Brothers attempted a sequel to Preston Sturges’ great Hollywood satire, Sullivan’s Travels (1941), but screwball is tied to a time and a place. The time was the Great Depression, when audiences needed escapism. The place was Hollywood and an industry making full use of talking pictures, finding writers from the New York stage (or Dorothy Parker’s Round Table) who would seize the opportunity to get smart talk into the films. But over and above all that I think the real reason for screwball was Hollywood’s need to fast-talk its way around the new Production Code censorship of 1934. No coincidence then that in that same year Frank Capra made It Happened One Night (1934) and Howard Hawks directed Twentieth Century (1934). Both shared an unorthodox portrayal of romance and cynicism. A new genre was off and running.

“I think that the primary objective of my kind of picture is entertainment on a certain level, with a little something to talk about after it. If after they leave the movie house, they spend half an hour just talking as to what they saw and if it makes any kind of indent within the frame of the entertainment, I think I've achieved something.” This day long course will explore and immerse in the art of Billy Wilder’s storytelling from social commentaries through melodramas to satirical comedies.

We all recognise film as a potentially immensely powerful medium; many of us will have undoubtedly wept in sorrow or trembled in fear when watching films that have moved us or frightened us. There are times when something, a moment or moments from a film stay with us beyond the duration of its screening; it may be that we experience these almost immediately or it might be that this something emerges days later. This course aims to explore the film moment as a particularly powerful effect (and affect) of the film viewing experience by examining a moment or moments from a specific film and exploring it/them in the context of the entire film. We tend to think of a film in terms of its entire narrative, its full running time, but the ‘moment’, the thing that resonates and reverberates afterwards can be just as important, possibly more so as this course aims to consider. Each two hour Film Moments course will explore moments specific to a film or films that will be revealed at the start of each course; there will also be the opportunity to examine and discuss your own film moments…

Set against the backdrop of the Spanish Civil War, Guillermo del Toro’s dark fantasy Pan’s Labyrinth follows a young girl named Ofelia as she navigates a brutal military outpost and a series of eerie, mythological trials. The film is celebrated for its seamless blend of historical tragedy and grotesque "fairy tale" imagination, utilising incredible practical effects blended with CGI. Its legacy lies in proving that fantasy can be a sophisticated, adult medium for exploring complex themes like fascism, disobedience, and trauma.In this one-day workshop, we will watch Pan’s Labyrinth together, but with a crucial difference. Instead of viewing the film simply from start to finish, students will be given the power to pause the film at will, and discuss whatever they want. Guided by an expert on the film’s themes, ideas and production history, we will subject the film to extensive debate and analysis, discussing its visual language and hidden depths whilst reflecting on its universal themes.
By getting to “freeze” the film at key moments, we can look past the familiar story and investigate how the movie actually works. We will treat the film as a living document, pausing to unpack a specific camera angle, a lighting choice, or a piece of dialogue, allowing for a deep-dive analysis that is impossible during a standard screening.
This is an invitation to stop being a passive viewer and start being a cinematic detective.

The television programmes of ITC (Incorporated Television Company) launched the careers of Patrick McGoohan and Roger Moore, made Lady Penelope and Kermit the Frog household names and attracted Hollywood stars such as Tony Curtis and Shirley MacLaine. Rivalling America television shows, ITC produced stylish, colourful Cult adventure series throughout the 1960s and 70s

The horror film has a lengthy history with F. W. Murnau’s Nosferatu: A Symphony of Horror (1922) generally acknowledged as one of the all-time greats of cinema, expressing as one critic describes it, the ‘poetry of fear’. As one of the first feature length vampire films it’s influence, and legacy has been widely felt. Film remakes also have a history that goes back to cinema’s origins with filmmakers copying films made by others almost from the outset. This course will explore this phenomenon but through the specific genre of the horror film, focussing on films that feature vampires and werewolves (and other assorted ‘monsters’). Robert Eggers’ Nosferatu (2024) comes just over one hundred years after its silent progenitor 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 and werewolf films from across this century of cinema, this course will explore why these films remain such a popular sub-genre of the horror film and it will consider why they continue to exercise such power over its spectators.

2019 was marked by the death of a true mistress of world cinema, Agnès Varda. A giant of French and world cinema her career began in 1955 with her first feature film, La pointe courte and ended with the release of her final work, Varda par Agnès (2019), not long after her death. This 3-week course will introduce you to three of her classic films and will allow us to explore her life, her career and her status as a ‘feminist’ icon.

We all recognise film as a potentially immensely powerful medium; many of us will have undoubtedly wept in sorrow or trembled in fear when watching films that have moved us or frightened us. There are times when something, a moment or moments from a film stay with us beyond the duration of its screening; it may be that we experience these almost immediately or it might be that this something emerges days later. This course aims to explore the film moment as a particularly powerful effect (and affect) of the film viewing experience by examining a moment or moments from a specific film and exploring it/them in the context of the entire film. We tend to think of a film in terms of its entire narrative, its full running time, but the ‘moment’, the thing that resonates and reverberates afterwards can be just as important, possibly more so as this course aims to consider. Each two hour Film Moments course will explore moments specific to a film or films that will be revealed at the start of each course; there will also be the opportunity to examine and discuss your own film moments…