Film studies

This page links to film studies resources, and is primarily targeting film studies students. Film studies is a separate subject to media studies. But these articles will provide excellent contextual information for media students

Resources

Past paper questions

Revision checklists

Evaluation

Critical Approaches to Film Analysis

Documentary

Stories We Tell: Initial discussion 2024 and 'documentary truth'

Stories We Tell: Initial Discussion 2023

Exploring the notion of documentary truth 

How 'real' is Stories We Tell (2012)? (initial discussion)

Emotional manipulation and diegesis in Stories We Tell

Postmodern theory and documentary form

Stories We Tell - final discussion

Stories We Tell - how can you actually talk about this film in the exam?

Stories We Tell - approaches to analysis MEGAPOST

Documenting reality - documentary modes and Stories We Tell

Simulation and simulacra in Stories we Tell

Revising documentary

British and American film experience

Spectatorship - the process of a privileged spectator immersing themselves into the film experience

Surrealism 

Introduction to surrealism: what is surrealism?

Un Chien Andalou - initial discussion and narrative elements

Exploring the surrealist aesthetic: a textual analysis of Un Chien Andalou

L’Age d’Or - discussion and themes

L'Age d'Or and the construction of dream logic

Surrealism as transgression: l'Age d'Or

Building case studies for L'Age d'Or

Exam practice and structure

Examples of surrealist films

Sex, death, fetishism and abjection: considering Freudian symbolism and transgressive themes in L’age D’or

Exam practice: the surrealist aesthetic

Revising the nouvelle vague and early French surrealist cinema

French New Wave

Applying auteur theory to French new wave cinema

Revising the nouvelle vague and early French surrealist cinema

Exploring micro elements in A bout de souffle

Ideology

Ideology of conflict - an introduction

The Battle of Algiers - encoding conflict

How do micro elements encode conflict in Battle of Algiers?

Battle of Algiers - the opening sequence, encoding ideological perspectives and exploring the representation of RSAs and ISAs

Ideology, conflict and District 9

District 9 - Genre, abjection, discussion

District 9 - how does the opening sequence and Alive in Joburg (2005) use cinema verité techniques to construct a sense of verisimilitude?

Intertextuality and District 9

Abjection, disgust and emotional response in District 9 and South African cinema

Whiplash - an analysis of the 'not my tempo' scene

Whiplash discussion: Is Terrance Fletcher justified?

Whiplash: conflict, ideology and representation 

Gender, identity and conflict in Whiplash, Battle of Algiers and District 9

Exam practice: spectatorial response and the ideology of conflict

Exploring micro elements in the ideology of conflict