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Semester 2

Contemporary Cinema (DESI08010)

Course Website

http://www.eca.ed.ac.uk/newelectives2014

Subject

Design

College

CAHSS

Credits

20

Normal Year Taken

2

Delivery Session Year

2023/2024

Pre-requisites

**Please see Additional Restrictions below**

Course Summary

We are moved by the moving image: the cinematic medium shapes our individual and collective experiences and understanding of the world around us in powerful and profound ways. This course helps students to better appreciate and understand the contemporary cultural and socio-political importance of film. It achieves this aim through three central routes. Firstly, a series of nine case studies of important international films released in British cinemas over the past five years illustrates and instantiates a diverse range of key aesthetic, ideological and industrial contexts that twenty-first century filmmakers both contribute to and challenge through the work they produce. Secondly, the weekly case studies are drawn from a range of cinematic traditions, including animation, live-action fiction and documentary filmmaking. Thirdly, and despite their diversity, each of the weekly case studies is taught in such a way as to equip students with some of the foundational critical skills and forms of knowledge associated with the academic study of film. These include: an understanding of the relationship between authorial intent, audiovisual technique and audience experience; an ability to locate and critique individual films within appropriate comparative contexts, such as directorial oeuvre and traditions of film genre; and an informed understanding of the varied range of critical traditions and methodologies that scholars past and present have brought to the study of cinema as both social institution and art form. This course is taught exclusively by filmmakers and film critics from Edinburgh College of Art of Art, School of Design; each case study session is supported by film screenings and seminar tutorials. Ultimately, this course enhances students appreciation of film form and many important critical and creative debates and trends within twenty-first century film culture. In order to be able to take Contemporary Cinema in semester 2, you MUST be able to attend BOTH the following weekly course teaching sessions: 1. Two hours of lectures per week; AND 2. A weekly one-hour course seminar group. Please note that the course also contains a weekly film screening. However, attendance at course screenings is OPTIONAL, so long as you make your own arrangements to watch course films in advance of lectures and seminars.

Course Description

In order to be able to take Contemporary Cinema in semester 2, you MUST be able to attend BOTH the following weekly course teaching sessions: 1. Two hours of lectures per week; AND 2. A weekly one-hour course seminar group. Please note that the course also contains a weekly film screening. However, attendance at course screenings is OPTIONAL, so long as you make your own arrangements to watch course films in advance of lectures and seminars.

Assessment Information

Written Exam 0%, Coursework 100%, Practical Exam 0%

Additional Restrictions

Unless you are nominated on a Design exchange agreement, visiting students are only permitted to enrol in one Art or Design course each, per semester, before the start of the relevant semester’s welcome period – and spaces on each course are limited so cannot be guaranteed for any student. Enrolment in a second course from this group will depend on whether there are still spaces available in the January Welcome Period, and cannot be guaranteed. It is NOT appropriate for students to contact staff within this subject area to ask for an exception to be made; all enquiries to enrol in these courses must be made through the CAHSS Visiting Student Office. This is due to the extremely limited number of spaces available in this very popular subject area.

view the timetable and further details for this course