Film Studies Courses
Study online & in London

Explore the Hollywood Western from the first classic of this major genre, Stagecoach, to a late masterpiece, Unforgiven. We will look at the ways in which it has evolved, in terms of both filmmaking and theme, its mythical representation of the American west and its powerful visual style, while also considering the impact of key stars and directors and a range of critical approaches to the genre.

This course will discuss the development of women’s cinematic modes of representation and expression, and the place of women in the film industry within the current social, political and cultural climate. It will begin by considering the question of gender representation and will develop towards an examination of the contemporary notion of the ‘female gaze’. The course will refer to key pioneers as well as to contemporary female filmmakers while paying attention to cultural creative diversity.

London is one of the world’s great cinematic cities. It is a city that has been captured on film since the advent of moving pictures. It is also a city whose own story has been profoundly shaped by film. This course will tell the history of London’s depiction onscreen, and how that depiction has impacted on the city itself over the course of twentieth and twenty-first centuries.

Once a significant part of Hollywood's output, the 'B' movie, characterised by low budgets, shorter running times and an absence of stars, originated in a Depression era strategy offering a cheaper, second feature as part of a double bill. Explore the history of the 'B' movie through a range of examples and consider their production and exhibition contexts along with their critical reputations.

From 1973 to 1982, Robert De Niro and Martin Scorsese forged the most dynamic actor-director relationship in American cinema. The iconoclastic, uncompromising films they made together were at the vanguard of The New Hollywood and yet - by virtue of the pair’s New York origins and attitude - distinctly separate from it. This course explores what made Scorsese and De Niro so different, so un-Hollywood, and yet so central to the culture of the 70s and early 80s - and assesses their influence on contemporary cinema.

Gerry Anderson: “I never wanted to work with puppets.” Gerry and Sylvia Anderson created with their team at AP Films British television’s greatest puppet series, Thunderbirds. For over sixty years the iconic programme alongside other productions from the Anderson stable have continued to amaze and enthral generations of youngsters, with their stories of action and adventure.

Quentin Tarantino’s non-linear crime odyssey Pulp Fiction (1994) weaves together the lives of two hitmen, a boxer, and a gangster's wife in a stylised, neon-drenched Los Angeles. The film revolutionised independent cinema in the 1990s, popularising rapid-fire pop culture dialogue and an aesthetic of “cool” that focused on style over traditional narrative structure. Its legacy is found in its massive influence on a generation of filmmakers and its successful elevation of "pulp" storytelling to high-art status.

Hitchcock's American period saw his most spectacular work, a body of films that cemented his reputation not only as the 'master of suspense' but as a major filmmaker, one whose work includes some of cinema's most popular and critically admired films. This course explores Hitchcock's Hollywood career, the films, their production and their reception, while also assessing his critical reputation.

A western, The Great Train Robbery (1903 Edwin S.Porter) was almost the first genre film. Had the Oscars been around in 1924, director John Ford’s epic western The Iron Horse would have swept the lot but his Stagecoach (1939) was nominated for Best Picture, another first for a western. The 1950s were a high point in the cinema and massively on television: The Lone Ranger, Roy Rogers, Wagon Train, Bonanza, and Gunsmoke, the first ‘adult TV western’. Westerns had an artistic renaissance, from Red River (1948 Howard Hawks) to Rio Grande (1950 John Ford) to Rio Bravo (1959 Howard Hawks). They declined in the sixties until Sergio Leone’s ‘spaghetti western’ revival. Westerns are now so sporadic that they seem like events. However, there is a new revival on streaming platforms: Ghosts of Red Ridge (2024), Yellowstone (2018), and Eddington (2025).