Film Studies Courses
Study online & in London

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).

The history of the cinema is a rich, rewarding and dynamic area of study. Cinema, because it is both an art form and an industrial product, can be studied from several different historical perspectives. These have included investigations into the history of technological development associated with cinema’s origins and its subsequent development, but historians have also explored its evolution into an art form. They have written about important individual figures or influential groups and have examined specific films in great detail. Historians have also examined the national, cultural, political and social contexts that might offer insight into the cinema at a given historical moment. They have examined the changing demographic and viewing habits of spectators and explored the mutability of cinemas themselves. With so much to consider and so many different approaches to take, the history of cinema continues to evolve. As such this advanced level film studies course will explore what it means to study film history, examine the various methodologies that one might take, while at the same time looking at relevant filmic and cinematic examples.

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.

Have 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.

Wong Kar-wai is one of the most distinctive and influential filmmakers in world cinema, celebrated for his visual style, melancholy romanticism, and evocative treatment of time, memory, and urban life. This six-week course introduces students to Wong’s cinema and explores the wider contexts that shaped his work, from his emergence out of the Hong Kong film industry to his international consecration as a transnational auteur. Through close study of films such as Days of Being Wild, Chungking Express, Fallen Angels, Happy Together, I n the Mood for Love, 2046 and The Grandmaster, we will take a deep dive into Wong’s signature stylistic and thematic motifs of missed connections, longing, repetition, displacement, and historical transition, while situating his work within Hong Kong cinema before and after the 1997 handover.

What is the relationship between film and music? From jazz to rap, from music documentaries to musicals, from female conductors to counterculture, what does cinema tell us about music? We will discuss the importance of music in films, not only in terms of the power of the film score and how it has changed over time, but also in relation to the impact that it has on the storyline and on the audience, without of course forgetting the representation of musicians and instruments as an historical and aesthetic mirror of times.

This crucial course on contemporary cinema coincides with the sheer variety of films released immediately before BAFTA /Academy Awards season. Join a community of cinephiles to discuss and debate your favourite films of the past year and compile a list-The List of Best Films-added to and modified as new films are released each week. Students become critics in an ongoing class conversation, some even sharing their inner-geek in a guilt-free environment. As we meet on Mondays, some students extend the day by going to the special price Monday Matinees at several neighbourhood cinemas. Whether you call it homework or dedication, that’s entertainment!

Come and join us at the Cultureplex Ciné-Club, where once a week, for 10 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.

Come and join us at the Cultureplex Ciné-Club, where once a week, for 10 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 is a repeat of the course delivered on Thursdays last year with the tutor Dr Paul Sutton. For those who took that class please see HF324 which runs on a Tuesday afternoon.

Come and join us at the French Film Ciné-Club, where once a week, for 10 weeks, we will watch and discuss French 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.

On this course we will watch the films of pioneering women directors and discuss how their work stands to enrich the established conventions of cinema as well as our approaches to the world beyond the screen.

The selection of films reflects both canonical classics from film history and innovative new voices from around the globe. For those who have taken the course before, the selection of films will be different every time it runs - meaning that students can re-enrol and continue to expand their cinematic horizons.