HFMA03111U Film and audio-visual aesthetics

Film has both developed and embraced the cultural life and aesthetics of its time. This course addresses the feature film in particular, both nationally and internationally, but also TV series and documentaries. Of primary importance are audio-visual aesthetics and film genres and narrative forms, their historical development and institutional embedding. The course develops skills in film analysis through the examination of stylistic features, narrative forms, genres, art cinema, national film cultures, gender, and film's relation to reality within both analog and digital media cultures. In addition, the course emphasizes the development of a self-reflexive method competence, that is, the ability to ask questions about the assumptions and usefulness of individual theories and methods. Six major works representing both fiction films, TV series, and documentary will provide a frame of reference for the course, but many other works will be treated as well.