VISU2071: Global Cinematic Constellations

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• To expose students to a historically and geographically wide range of films, topics, and associated academic research in order to enhance their understanding of both the diversity of cultural production in a global context and the manifold forms of contact and transfer that underlie and animate such cultural production.
• To enhance the students capacity to mediate effectively between various cultures by familiarizing them with debates about the forms, effects, and problematic aspects of a global culture and the condition of globality as such.
• To develop students transcultural awareness by emphasizing the intrinsic relatedness and hybridity of all culture across time and space.
• To extend students conceptual capabilities and analytic skills by exposing them to a variety of critical methodologies, approaches and theoretical registers, and by fostering their skills of close reading and formal analysis of visual artefacts.
• To prepare students for further study and research in the field of visual art and culture, also with a view to help them articulate dissertation projects in this area.

• The module is concerned with the role of cinema as both a medium of reflection of the condition of globality and as a global medium in and of itself.
• In this context, it engages with two types of global cinematic constellations:
• Actual depictions, in cinematic works, of various forms of contact and encounter on a global scale, through which the condition of globality is represented, negotiated and interrogated on screen.
• Moments in which the very forms and aesthetic features of global cinema themselves can be shown to be the result of instances of transcultural exchange and encounter.
• The module is centrally invested in an understanding of the rich constellations andsometimes fraught and unevenprocesses of contact and transfer that characterize and constitute global cinematic production.
• Critically assessing the historical, political and aesthetic parameters of a global cinema through particular, locally situated, case studies, students will gain a sense of the constitutive transculturality of the cinematic medium in a globalizing world and also probe the gains and limitations of the very discourse of globality itself.

Subject-specific Knowledge:

• value the importance of cinema in transnational and global contexts;
• recognise important moments in the global history and evolution of cinema from the 19th century until today;
• have advanced knowledge and understanding of the key terminology necessary for the analysis and interpretation of cinematic images in a global context;
• understand complex theories relevant for the study of cinema, including both well-established concepts and new ideas.

Subject-specific Skills:

• critical skills in the close reading and analysis of cinematic images;
• an ability to write critically and convincingly about the evolution of the cinematic medium in a global context;
• sensitivity to generic conventions and relevant cultural/socio-historical contexts;
• an ability to discern aesthetic and formal specificities of cinematic images;
• an ability to assess and critically approach a wide range of writings about cinema.

Key Skills:

• the capacity for critical analysis and reasoning;
• the capacity for a clear communication of ideas and information, and the ability to devise and sustain cogent arguments;
• the ability to gather, sift, process, synthesise and critically evaluate information from a variety of sources;
• the ability to work out strategies for interpretation;
• the self-discipline and self-direction necessary to pursue independent research;
• responsiveness to the disciplines of working alone, and with others as part of a group;
• the ability to manage time and work to deadlines;
• the ability to make effective use of information and communications technology.

• Central to all teaching and learning on this moduleand supporting the acquisition of the modules learning outcomeswill be a historically informed, nuanced, and intellectually rigorous analysis and critical interrogation of cinematic artefacts in a distinctly transcultural and global context, based on formal analysis and an engagement with theoretical texts. In lectures, students will be familiarized with the historical, conceptual and theoretical contexts of the primary material to be studied but will also engage in more interactive and group-based forms of learning. The latter will be central to seminar work, too. The summative assessments, as specified below, will test the learning outcomes and have the students engage with the course material through more immediately academic forms, which may include an annotated bibliography assignment and an essay assignment. The formative, as outlined below, will encourage them to practice more public forms of engagement with cinematic artefacts and explore a possible real-world application of their skills in the area of cultural criticism.

Students will be expected to produce one of the following in the course of the module: a short, newspaper-style film review on one of the films studied for the module; a short, individual or dialogic, podcast on one or two films studied for the module, or on one of the broader thematic units of the module; an individual or dialogic VLOG on one or two films studied for the module, or on one of the broader thematic units of the module.

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