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Global Film Cultures

  • Module code: FM5002
  • Year: 2018/9
  • Level: 5
  • Credits: 30
  • Pre-requisites: None
  • Co-requisites: None

Summary

The module will introduce students to significant thematic and artistic trends and practices in international film culture. It will consider how regional/national and cultural/industrial circumstances have determined visual traditions across a range of cultural contexts, looking at their impact and their critical significance. It offers students the opportunity to study film cultures and industries outside the hegemony of the English-speaking mainstream.

Teaching Block 1 will introduce students to emerging approaches and movements, and ways of understanding them. It will examine the global circulation of films and their network of influences in other media, beyond cinema. We will discuss issues such as the place of regionally specific narratives and images in an internationalised media market, how cultural and national identity informs regional film practices, and how media texts become commodities in an inter cultural environment of postmodern cultural trade and exchange. Does international film culture encourage artistic innovation? How has the internationalisation of film culture shaped issues of the local versus the global; does it enforce a cosmopolitan uniformity?

In Teaching Block 2, the module will explore the reconfigured relationship between world and national/regional film cultures, including evolving traditions, revised strategies and responses to Hollywood dominance. It concludes by examining new trends, which either assert difference, borrow subversively from Hollywood, or emulate its narrative forms but in the service of their own histories or national profile.

Aims

  • To extend the scope of students' understanding of film culture beyond mainstream Hollywood.
  • To locate global film cultures in their historical, social and political contexts.
  • To examine the theoretical and cultural aspects of international film cultures including their distinctiveness and their differences.
  • To attend to ways in which film and media contribute to a sense of national identity in European, postcolonial, 'Third World' and/or developing societies.

Learning outcomes

  • Account for the specificity of national and transnational film cultures within their historical contexts
  • Analyse characteristic features of visual texts and their associated practices
  • Demonstrate an understanding of the way in which these film cultures differ from dominant Hollywood and contribute to their own national and transnational cultures
  • Approach other areas of world film and media with an appreciation and understanding of their unique qualities.

Curriculum content

  • Third World' responses to European modernism: Glauber Rocha (Brazil), Diop Mambety (Senegal)
  • Contemporary and Experimental Realisms: Brillante Mendoza (Philippines)
  • The 'Slow Movement' and global auteurial innovation
  • Remembering dictatorship, retro and nostalgia: Germany, Spain
  • New Waves: Romania
  • Transnational forces, transnational marketing: Mahamat Saleh Haroun (Chad); China
  • Unburying the past, and the banality of evil: Chile
  • Performing the nation, heritage and national commodification: China and Europe
  • National appropriations and variations of popular genres
  • Popular Auteurs: Takeshi Kitano (Japan)
  • The Fourth World, precolonial journeys, and indigenous encounters: Atanarjuat: Embrace of the Serpent; Ten Canoes
  • Postmodern European spoof and parody: Jeunet and Caro, Delicatessen; de la Iglesia, The Day of the Beast

Teaching and learning strategy

Delivery will be by interactive lectures, seminars and screenings. Screenings are part of an active, collaborative learning process with the tutor present and involve participatory discussion.

The module will make use of the Virtual Learning Environment (VLE) Canvas for communication and dissemination of information between students and staff as well as making online learning materials available to all.

All courses based in the Kingston School of Art offer students free access to the online video tutorial platform Lynda.com. This provides a wide range of subjects to choose from, many with downloadable exercise files, including software tutorials covering photography, graphics, web design, audio and music, CAD and Microsoft Office software, as well as courses on business and management skills. Some of these are embedded in the curriculum and offer additional self-paced learning, others may be taken at will by students wishing to broaden their employability skills in other areas.

Breakdown of Teaching and Learning Hours

Definitive UNISTATS Category Indicative Description Hours
Scheduled learning and teaching Lectures, workshops, tutorials, screenings 88
Guided independent study 212
Total (number of credits x 10) 300

Assessment strategy

The module will be assessed through a 15 minute presentation which will take place at the end of TB1 (A1) plus a portfolio of work (3000 words) to be submitted in TB2 (A2). The content of the portfolio will necessarily vary year on year in line with changes of case study, but may include critical analyses, essays, and other forms of creative and critical responses to the material covered in the module. The presentation at the end of TB1 is designed to test comprehension and understanding of key ideas, and will provide the opportunity for formative feedback prior to the submission of the rest of the portfolio. Seminars and tutorials will offer opportunities for formative feedback prior to final submission.

Mapping of Learning Outcomes to Assessment Strategy (Indicative)

Learning Outcome Assessment Strategy
Account for the specificity of national and transnational film cultures within their historical contexts A1, A2
Analyse characteristic features of visual texts and their associated practices A1, A2
Demonstrate an understanding of the way in which these film cultures differ from dominant Hollywood and contribute to their own national and transnational cultures A1, A2
Approach other areas of world film and media with an appreciation and understanding of their unique qualities. A1, A2

Elements of Assessment

Description of Assessment Definitive UNISTATS Categories Percentage
15-minute Presentation (A1) Practical Exam 30%
Portfolio (A2) (3,000 words) Coursework 70%
Total (to equal 100%) 100%

Achieving a pass

It is NOT a requirement that any element of assessment is passed separately in order to achieve an overall pass for the module.

Bibliography core texts

Costanzo, W. (2013) World Cinema through Global genres, Malden MA, Oxford: Wiley Blackwell

Dennison, S. & S. Hwee Lim, (2006), Remapping World Cinema: Identity, culture and politics in Film, London, Wallflower press

Durovicova, N. & Newman K. (2010) World Cinemas, Transnational perspectives, Routledge

Eleftheriotis, D. (2010) Cinematic Journeys: Film and Movement, Edinburgh UP

Garibotto, V. Perez, J.  (2016) The Latin American Road Movie, Palgrave MacMillan

Iordanova, D. (ed) The Film Festival Reader, St Andrews Film Studies

Jeon, SH. and Szaniawski, J.(eds) (2016) The Global Auteur: the Politics of Authorship in 21st Century cinema, London, NY: Bloomsbury Press

Mano, W. Knorpp, B. and Agina, A. (2017) African Film Cultures; Contexts of Creation and Citculation, Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars Publishing

Neves, J. and Sarkar, B. (2017) Asian Video Cultures: In the Penumbra of the Global, Duke UP

Sheibani, K. (2011) The Poetics of Iranian Cinema: The Aesthetics, Modernity and Film after the Revolution, I.B.Tauris

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