MA in Film and Screen Studies - additional information

The aim of the MA in Film and Screen Studies is to re-think film studies in the age of convergence. Over several decades, film has been supplemented with screen-based media such as television, the Internet, video games, installation art and much more, and digitisation has recently resulted in the fact that distinctions between media forms are harder and harder to draw.

This postgraduate programme seeks to reconsider film studies by opening up the range of objects analysed and approaches employed in investigating the culture of moving images. Exploring both the old and the new, philosophy and history, theory and practice, it works rigorously to meet the challenges of the 21st century's culture of transnational movement of media and people, changing artistic and political practices as well as ever developing technologies.

What distinguishes the MA in Film and Screen Studies is its innovative approach to learning and research. You are encouraged to think critically and imaginatively, across media forms, disciplinary boundaries as well as conceptual and creative work.

Students will be joining an active department with internationally acclaimed research and teaching in both film theory and practice. The department hosts a thriving programme of visiting scholars and practitioners (for instance, the MA forum; Goldsmiths Radical Media Forum). Our location in London means that students have the opportunity to explore the city’s extraordinary offer in moving image culture, from international festivals to art galleries and key institutions in the world. The MA attracts a stimulating mix of UK and international students from across Continental Europe, the Americas, and Asia. See recent student experiences and testimonials.

Structure

The MA in Film and Screen Studies consists of:

• two core courses (60 CATS total)
• option courses to the value of 60 CATS
• a 60 CATS-dissertation on a topic agreed in conjunction with your supervisor

Core courses

The magical and the real (30 credits, term one)

In this first core course, we return to the origins of the idea and practice of cinema in a fascination with the real and the magical. Historians of the cinema conventionally associate its appeal with two ‘fathers’: the Lumiere Brothers and Georges Melies. The Lumieres are associated with documentary and realism, and Melies with magic films and fantasy. Those fascinations continue beyond celluloid to reality TV and surveillance cameras, for instance, in the case of the real and digital special effects and other forms of screen fantasy in the case of the magical. By examining the real and the magical in their various screen incarnations, we hope to achieve a better understanding of the range of screen and film studies, in terms of objects, approaches, and issues. Fundamental to our work is the recognition that the real and the magic are not mutually exclusive and oppositional on screen – reality versus fantasy – but that they are inter-dependent: the magic of bringing the screen to life, with all the complex questions about subjectivity, presence, and prosthesis that phrase implies.

Screen cultures (30 credits, term two)

The second core course maps today’s post-cinematic screen culture in terms of technologies, politics and aesthetics. Inter-disciplinary in its scope, it summons from film and visual studies, critical theory, psychology and philosophy so as to explore how images move and evolve in our screen-saturated world in different contexts, ranging from entertainment and science to the arts, as well as to analyse what kinds of desires, perceptions and affectivities their movement generates. The course takes first a genealogical look into the emergence of modernity’s screen culture in the late 19th century, charting the economic forces, power formations and models of subjectification that were involved in the process of moving images’ becoming the major socio-technological force of modernity. Secondly, the course maps the work of screens in our biopolitical era, analysing how screens, from video games to virtual realities, shape the conditions of agency today. Lastly, the course discusses the possibilities of critical practice and thinking through screens, analysing how artistic creations can recombine and redistribute the sensibilities of our age and thus animate critical consciousness of the present. The course requires students to critically reflect on their own relationship to contemporary screen cultures, relationships that may be productive, poetic and arbitrary as much as they are disciplined, rationalised and controlled.

Option courses

Up to 60 credits of option modules selected from the Department of Media and Communications, or from one of the following departments: Anthropology, Centre for Cultural Studies, Sociology, English and Comparative Literature.

Two new practice modules will be offered for students on the MA Film and Screen Studies in 2012-2013: 'Introduction to Screen Practice: Cinematography' (15 CATS) and 'Introduction to Screen Practice: Animation' (15 CATS). Please note that places on these courses are limited. Please contact the course convenor for more information.

Students on the MA Film and Screen Studies can also take an option from one of the MA Film & Media programmes at other University of London colleges. Please consult the SSG website for further details of other programmes and the Film and Screen Studies Convenor at Goldsmiths for more details on how to take part options at other colleges. Options taken under this scheme are deemed to count for 30 CATS at Goldsmiths.

Please note that the programme is changing constantly. For the latest details, please contact the course convenor Dr Pasi Valiaho.

For general information and information on fees and how to apply please see the online prospectus entry.