This module is not currently running in 2024 to 2025.
This course investigates some major production and aesthetic trends of postwar European cinema. Students are introduced to a selection of European films as well as to the writings of key Continental filmmakers, theorists and critics.
Topics may include: the subjective realisms of the French New Wave and New German Cinema; cycles and trends in European genres, such as the horror film and the western; the aesthetic claims of Italian Neo-Realism and Dogme '95.
These movements will be examined for their claims to interpret the real world, their relationship to films in other national contexts, and also interrogated for the economic and artistic motivations behind their existence as critical categories.
Total contact hours: 60
Private study hours: 240
Total study hours: 300
Essay 1 (1000 words) (20%)
Essay 2 (3000 words) (60%)
Group Presentation (20%)
Richard Armstrong (2005), Understanding Realism (London: BFI)
Elizabeth Ezra (2004), European Cinema (Oxford: Oxford University Press)
Catherine Fowler (ed) (2002), The European Cinema Reader (London: Routledge)
Julia Hallam (2000), Realism and Popular Cinema (Manchester: Manchester University Press)
Ginette Vincendeau (ed) (2000), Encyclopedia of European Cinema (London: Routledge, 1996)
See the library reading list for this module (Canterbury)
On successfully completing the module students will be able to:
- Identify aesthetic, generic and thematic trends in European cinema from 1945 onwards.
- Examine aesthetic and political debates about film and realism.
- Classify a range of (sometimes conflicting) concepts in close analysis of a diverse range of films from the period.
- Review and critically appraise the origins and rigour of "waves" and movements and cycles as critical concepts.
- Evaluate the political and economic structures which underwrote the production and reception of European cinema in the postwar period.
- Deliberate on the questions of national, ethnic and sexual identity relevant to postwar European cinema.
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