Online Film Studies Courses

When Twin Peaks ended in 1991, audiences were left with a warning: ‘I’ll see you again in 25 years’. Much of the show’s surrealism wasn’t to be taken literally, but this time showrunners David Lynch and Mark Frost made good on their word, releasing Twin Peaks: The Return a quarter century later to rapturous acclaim. This course will explore how The Return both built upon and shattered much of what the series established through contexts like reboots, streaming, and Lynch’s wider oeuvre.

Explore British cinema of the 1930s, a decade that reflects the first instance of an industry in which film production of all kinds was able to flourish. From cheap 'quota quickies' to lavish prestige productions and genres including comedy and crime, a British national cinema began to emerge, its critical reputation bolstered by a series of striking documentaries and the Hitchcock thriller.

This course explores how filmmakers across the world have used cinema to confront, question, and reimagine the legacies of colonialism through memory and history. Focusing on specific films from Lebanon, Palestine, Taiwan, the Philippines, Chile, Africa, and the diasporas, we will examine how cinema has become a crucial medium for addressing historical violence, displacement, silence, and resistance in postcolonial societies. These films span fiction, documentary, essay film, and experimental modes, and they engage with topics including gendered memory, forbidden histories, colonial amnesia, Indigenous erasure, exile, diaspora, and intergenerational trauma. Cinema emerges here as both a site of remembrance and a space of counter-history: a medium through which suppressed stories can be visualised, and emotionally reactivated in the present.

Please note that for those students who have taken previous versions of this course, the selection of films and the topics covered will be different from past iterations of the course.

Joan Crawford was more than a movie star. From silent film ingénue to Oscar-winning actress, Crawford’s career spanned over four decades and reflected both the glamour and the grit of Hollywood’s golden age. This course explores how she shaped her own stardom, challenged the limits of the roles available to women, and crafted a persona that was equal parts elegance, ambition, and resilience.

This course explores how horror films stage unconscious conflict, desire, fear, and transformation. Drawing on Freud, Lacan, and Jung, we will examine key films across six subgenres-Mind, Body, Nature, Aliens, Vampires, and Home Invasion. Through close readings of titles including Donnie Darko, Carrie, Cujo, Predator, Twilight, and Misery, participants will engage with horror as a psychological text that reveals what culture represses, disavows, and returns through fear.

Mary Wild is a writer, lecturer, and podcaster with an academic background in psychoanalytic theory. She is the author of Psychoanalysing Horror Cinema (2025, Routledge).

Hitchcock established his reputation early on in his British career, particularly with a series of thrillers that showcased his distinctive style. This course explores his British films and the factors that helped to shape his filmmaking and, subsequently, his reputation as a major film artist, while also considering his position in, and relationship to British cinema of the 1920s and 1930s.

Emerging in the 1980s, and promoted as a prestige cinema, the British heritage film is typified by high production values, period settings and, often, a canonical literary source. We will view films such as A Room with a View (1985) and The Remains of the Day (1993) and discuss their appeal for both domestic and international audiences, while exploring the critical debates around heritage cinema.

Learn how to evaluate and discuss films while enjoying a working example of a City Lit Film Studies class. We will view clips from a wide variety of films, exploring themes and technique in cinemas from around the world. There will be a chance to review - in brief - film courses at City Lit (January - September 2027).

This course explores the Japanese New Wave, a radical and transformative period in Japanese cinema spanning roughly from the late 1950s to the mid-1970s. Emerging at a moment of political unrest, social upheaval, and industrial crisis, the Japanese New Wave saw a generation of filmmakers challenge the conventions of studio filmmaking, traditional aesthetics, and dominant narratives about Japanese society.