Film Studies

Film Studies at the University of Exeter is based in one of the top rated English departments in the UK for research, teaching and student experience. The dedicated Film Studies team have a wide range of expertise across American, East Asian, European and other World cinemas and receive excellent student feedback for their teaching. You’ll also have access to outstanding resources, including the extensive holdings of The Bill Douglas Centre, the largest library on the moving image in any British University.

As a student of Film Studies you’ll gain a deep and wide ranging knowledge of film as a cultural, social, industrial and global phenomenon. Over the duration of your degree you’ll be equipped with the knowledge and concepts to enable you to understand how and why cinema developed as it did, and how new moving image forms are shaping and defining film in the 21st century. The emphasis is on broad chronological and geographical coverage, a range of theoretical and conceptual approaches to film, and flexibility and choice for students.

Your studies will encompass the distinctive features and contexts of national and transnational film genres, movements and styles, such as German expressionism and the Hong Kong new wave. You will explore the aesthetics and technologies of the moving image, from pre- and silent cinema, through Hollywood classics, the special effects of blockbusters, and the forms of avant-garde film, as well as the features of cross-cultural cinema and contemporary digital screen media. You will engage with concepts of cinematic space, place and time and questions of gender, sexuality and identity. You’ll gain an understanding of the interaction between different film making contexts and industries and the directors, filmmakers and stars that worked in them.

You’ll be taught by highly qualified and experienced staff with a commitment to research-based teaching. Our research in the English department was graded as world leading in the last RAE (2008). Staff in Film Studies have recently published on: animation; Catherine Deneuve; CGI; Chinese queer cinema; early cinema; epics and blockbusters; the femme fatale; genre and genres; the Hollywood Left; international stardom and its relation to European culture; Mathieu Kassovitz; Miami Vice; North African filmmakers working in France; transnational cinemas; the history of sound design; stage illusions and special effects; tie-ins and marketing; media constructions of Seattle; Taiwanese cinema; and virtual actors and performance.

From the beginning of your degree you’ll benefit from a focus on your personal and professional development alongside your academic performance. You’ll be supported throughout your degree by personal tutoring and a range of study skills and employability training. You’ll also learn to work flexibly and creatively with others and engage in debate as well as exercising independent thought and judgement whilst becoming an effective independent learner.

All our staff are members of Exeter’s Centre for Research in Film Studies (CRIFS). Established in 1998 it provides a lively interdisciplinary research forum for research staff, academics, postgraduates and film practitioners. It encourages intellectual exchange between film theory, history and practice and regularly hosts external speakers from both academia and the creative industries to give papers, presentations and workshops. This all feeds into the teaching at undergraduate level as it ensures that your lecturers are up-to-date and engaged with current developments in the subject area. Recent speakers have included filmmakers Don Boyd, Mike Figgis, Mike Leigh and Nicolas Roeg, screenwriter Andrew Davies, and sound designer Tom Sayers.

Numbers

Exeter

Entrants: 15
Applicants: 201