University of Sydney Handbooks - 2020 Archive

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Film Studies Descriptions

Semester 2 2020 unit of study availability

Some Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences units of study originally intended to run in Semester 2, 2020 are no longer available.

A full and up-to-date list of units of study available in Semester 2, 2020 from the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, can be found on this webpage.
 

Film Studies

Major

A major in Film Studies requires 48 credit points from this table including:
(i) 12 credit points of 1000-level core units
(ii) 6 credit points of 2000-level core units
(iii) 6 credit points of 2000-level selective units
(iv) 6 credit points of 3000-level core units
(v) 12 credit points of 3000-level selective units
(vi) 6 credit points of 3000-level Interdisciplinary Project units

Minor

A minor in Film Studies requires 36 credit points from this table including:
(i) 12 credit points of 1000-level core units
(ii) 6 credit points of 2000-level core units
(iii) 6 credit points of 2000-level selective units
(iv) 6 credit points of 3000-level core units
(iv) 6 credit points of 3000-level selective units

1000-level units of study

Core
FILM1000 Introduction to Film Studies

Credit points: 6 Session: Intensive January,Semester 1 Classes: 1x2hr lectures/week, 1x1hr tutorial/week Prohibitions: ENGL1011 Assessment: 1x1000wd Film Sequence Analysis (20%), 1x1500wd Weekly Film Viewing Journal (30%), 1x2000wd Research Essay (40%), 1x Participation (10%) Mode of delivery: Normal (lecture/lab/tutorial) day Faculty: Arts and Social Sciences
How does film function as an artistic, technological and cultural form? This unit provides a critical introduction to elements of filmmaking and viewing, exploring the components of film form as they have evolved through the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. We will study films in a variety of cultural and historical contexts, from early cinema to the emergence of new digital cinemas, and discuss topics that include visual style, sound design, narrative, genre, and film authorship.
FILM1001 Hollywood: Art, Industry, Entertainment

Credit points: 6 Session: Semester 2 Classes: 1x2hr lecture/week, 1x1hr tutorial/week, 1x2hr screening Prohibitions: ARHT1003 Assessment: 1x1500wd Individual short analysis and essay (40%), 1x1500wd Individual multimedia project element (25%), 1x1500wd Group multimedia project (25%), x Participation (10%) Mode of delivery: Normal (lecture/lab/tutorial) day Faculty: Arts and Social Sciences
Since the early 20th century, Hollywood has dominated film screens around the world. This unit considers America's 'dream factory' as profit-oriented industry, mass entertainment, and cinematic art form. It covers key historical developments including the star system, Production Code censorship, New Hollywood, and the franchise film.

2000-level units of study

Core
FILM2000 From Silent to Sound Cinema

Credit points: 6 Session: Semester 2 Classes: 1x1hr lecture/week, 1x2hr tutorial/week Prerequisites: 12 credit points at 1000 level in the Film Studies major or 12 credit points at 1000 level in the Art History major or 12 credit points at 1000 level in Critical Studies or 12 credit points at 1000 level in the Visual Arts major Prohibitions: ARHT2052 or ARHT2652 Assessment: 1x1000wd equivalent Video portfolio (30%), 1x1000wd Video essay plan (20%), 1x2500wd equivalent Video essay (50%) Mode of delivery: Normal (lecture/lab/tutorial) day Faculty: Arts and Social Sciences
Examining cinema as a manifestation of modernity, this unit of study contextualizes early film as art, commodity, industry, institution and mass production of the senses. It introduces students to the study of the history and aesthetics of silent cinema, including major genres such as melodrama and slapstick, and the impacts of the transition to sound.
Selective
ARBC2210 Screening the Arab World

This unit of study is not available in 2020

Credit points: 6 Session: Semester 2 Classes: 1x1hr lecture/week, 1x1hr tutorial/week Prerequisites: 12 credit points at 1000 level in Arabic Languages and Culture or 12 credit points at 1000 level in Film Studies Assessment: 2x500wd film reviews (35%), 2x250wd cultural portfolios (10%), 1x2000wd research assignment (35%), 1x1000wd researh oresentation (10%), participation (10%) Mode of delivery: Normal (lecture/lab/tutorial) day Faculty: Arts and Social Sciences
This unit focuses on the history of cinema in the Arab world. The chefs-oeuvre of Arab cinema, the contemporary independent productions, and the poetic of their authors are studied in relation to the cultural, social and political history of the Arab world.
CAEL2039 Screen Arts: an Introduction

Credit points: 6 Session: Semester 1 Classes: 1x3-hour studio class/week Prerequisites: 12 credit points at 1000 level in Visual Arts or 12 credit points at 1000 level in Film Studies or 12 credit points at 1000 level in Studio Foundation Assessment: individual presentation and project proposal (15%) and assessment 1 (video project) (20%) and major self-directed project (65%) Mode of delivery: Normal (lecture/lab/tutorial) day Faculty: Arts and Social Sciences
This unit of study introduces you to the conceptual frameworks and technologies that shape the making of screen-based media and contemporary art practices. Through a series of lectures, seminars, tutorials and screenings you will explore the evolution of experimental film, video art and independent filmmaking from the 1960s to the present. You will engage in the production of a self-directed digital film that may be realized in any style or genre. The unit is supported by a technical program that provides you with the applied skills and competencies needed for the use of studio facilities and equipment.
ENGL2617 Postmodernism

This unit of study is not available in 2020

Credit points: 6 Session: Semester 2 Classes: 2x1-hour lectures Prerequisites: 12 Junior credit points in English or 6 Junior credit points in English and AMST1001 or (AMST1001 and (HSTY1076 or HSTY1023)) or 18 Junior credit points including ENGL1011 Prohibitions: ENGL2017 Assessment: 1x1500wd Essay (40%), 1x2000wd Take-home exercise (40%), 1x500wd equivalent Tutorial presentation (10%), Tutorial participation (10%) Mode of delivery: Normal (lecture/lab/tutorial) day Faculty: Arts and Social Sciences
What was postmodernism? This unit will explore the most interesting and innovative theoretical, literary and multimedia texts of the last half century to think about what aesthetic texts brought to arguments about politics, identity, truth and knowledge. We will examine the relationship between modernism and postmodernism, movements, communities and subcultures, experimentalism and activism, popular and high culture, and the rise of identity politics, the 'culture wars,' and queer theory.
ENGL2627 Screening Sexuality

Credit points: 6 Session: Semester 2 Classes: 1x2-hr seminar/week Prerequisites: 12 credit points at 1000 level in English or 12 credit points at 1000 level in Film Studies Prohibitions: ENGL2027 Assessment: 1x1500wd word essay (40%), 1x2000wd take-home exercise (40%), 1x500wd tutorial presentation (10%), tutorial participation (10%) Mode of delivery: Normal (lecture/lab/tutorial) day Faculty: Arts and Social Sciences
This unit explores the relationship between cinema and sexuality in classic films through detailed, historicised readings. Questions to be investigated include the erotics of cinematic genre and form; the sexual politics of representation and spectatorship; stardom, scandal and cult appreciation; cinema and sexuality as technologies of modernity; cinema, sexuality and pedagogy.
ENGL2638 Literature and Cinema

This unit of study is not available in 2020

Credit points: 6 Session: Semester 2 Classes: 1x1hr lecture/week, 1x2hr seminar/week Prerequisites: 12 Junior credit points in English or (6 Junior credit points from English and AMST1001) or 18 Junior credit points including ENGL1011 Prohibitions: ENGL2038 Assessment: 1x500wd Oral Presentation (10%), 1x2000wd Essay (50%), 1x1500wd Take-home exercise (40%) Mode of delivery: Normal (lecture/lab/tutorial) day Faculty: Arts and Social Sciences
This unit will examine issues arising from a comparative study of literature and cinema, including: the continuities and discontinuities between the two mediums; the cultural and historical contexts of literary and cinematic texts; authorship, auteurism and aesthetic authority; adaptation and intertextuality; the figurative styles of literature and cinema; narrative and narration in literature and cinema; genre study.
ENGL2668 Australian Gothic

This unit of study is not available in 2020

Credit points: 6 Session: Semester 2 Classes: 2x1hr lecture/week, 1x1hr tutorial/week Prerequisites: 12 credit points at 1000 level in English or 12 credit points at 1000 level in Australian Literature Prohibitions: ASLT2619 Assessment: 1x 5-10mins (approximately 500wd) oral presentation/summary (20%), 1x2000wd essay (40%), 1x2000wd take-home exercise (40%) Mode of delivery: Normal (lecture/lab/tutorial) day Faculty: Arts and Social Sciences
From the earliest days of European colonisation alongside visions of its promise, Australia has also been seen as the worst of all possible worlds, a hellish place of exile where nature seemed uncannily strange or hostile. The 'gothic' has offered a powerful means of representing this dystopian theme. This unit examines the gothic mode in Australian literature and film from the nineteenth century to the present, taking in such issues as 'Weird Melancholy', ghosts, bunyips, badlands and postcolonial (dis)enchantment.
ENGL2669 Australian Stage and Screen

Credit points: 6 Session: Semester 1 Classes: 2x1hr lecture/week, 1x1hr tutorial/week Prerequisites: 12 credit points at 1000 level in Australian Literature or 12 credit points at 1000 level in English Studies Prohibitions: ASLT2616 Australian Stage & Screen Assessment: 1x 5-10 minutes/500wd (based on textual analysis of selected text/passage) oral presentation/summary (20%), 1x 2000wd essay (40%), 1x 2000wd take-home exercise (40%) Mode of delivery: Normal (lecture/lab/tutorial) day Faculty: Arts and Social Sciences
Australian theatre and cinema have lively, at times intersecting, histories, and have played significant roles at both national and international levels, from the depiction of various local 'types' on stage and screen, to the work of Australian actors, directors and cinematographers overseas. This unit examines selected plays and films over the last century or so through a number of thematic focuses, including: race, gender and national identity; comic traditions; Australia and the world; modernity and innovation.
EUST2020 Screening Europe: After 1989

This unit of study is not available in 2020

Credit points: 6 Session: Semester 1 Classes: 1x2hr lecture-seminar/week, 1x1hr tutorial/week Prerequisites: 12 Junior credit points from Table A Assessment: 1x1000wd Assignment (30%), 1x1000wd Class presentation (20%), 1x2500wd Essay (50%) Mode of delivery: Normal (lecture/lab/tutorial) day Faculty: Arts and Social Sciences
Cinema was born on the eve of a century of conflict in Europe. Celebrated as an avant-garde art form, it was also used for political propaganda and popular entertainment during the 20th century. Most recently European cinema has taken on another function, contributing to the creation of modern European identities through critical self-representation. This unit focuses on a range of recent films in order to study social and cultural change in the new Europe of the past two decades.
ICLS2635 Science Fiction: The Future is Now

This unit of study is not available in 2020

Credit points: 6 Teacher/Coordinator: Assoc Prof Vrasidas Karalis Session: Semester 2 Classes: 1x1-hr lecture/week, 1x1-hr tutorial/week Prerequisites: 12 credit points at 1000 level in International and Comparative Literary Studies or 12 credit points at 1000 level in Film Studies Assessment: 1x5 minute oral presentation with written one page plan equivalent to 1000 words (10%), 2x2500wd essays (2x45%). Mode of delivery: Normal (lecture/lab/tutorial) day Faculty: Arts and Social Sciences
Science Fiction is one of the most interesting explorations of human future. Yet it addresses a number of social, political and existential issues that refer to the present: dilemmas, phobias and hopes of a world traumatised by war, disease and internal contradictions. Through the comparative study of novels and movies, this unit explores how the future, from a promised land of a great utopia, has become the dreadful exile into a dark dystopia.
ICLS2637 Watching Stars: Film and the Star System

This unit of study is not available in 2020

Credit points: 6 Session: Semester 1 Classes: 1x1hr lecture/week, 1x1hr tutorial/week Prerequisites: 12 credit points at 1000 level in International and Comparative Literary Studies or 12 credit points at 1000 level in Film Studies Assessment: 1x1000wds equivalent Oral Presentation (20%), 2x 2500wd Essay (80%) Mode of delivery: Normal (lecture/lab/tutorial) day Faculty: Arts and Social Sciences
This unit will investigate how film stars reflect national preoccupations and how they achieve national and transnational fame. It will examine and compare several major film stars from several cultures and will analyse their star image through, for example, their on-screen performance in film adaptations, their celebrity bodies and faces and their representations in the popular media. Students will be introduced to film star theories. Students will have to attend at least 4 film screenings.
MUSC2663 Survey of Film Music

Credit points: 6 Teacher/Coordinator: Dr James Wierzbicki Session: Semester 2 Classes: 2 hour lecture and 1 hour tut/week Prerequisites: 18 junior credit points Assessment: Review assignments 2,000 words (30%), final paper 2,500 words (50%), participation (20%) Mode of delivery: Normal (lecture/lab/tutorial) day Faculty: Sydney Conservatorium of Music
This unit is an introductory survey of the history and aesthetics of film music from the late 1890s to the present day. Topics for discussion will include the dramatic function of music as an element of cinematic narrative, the codification of musical iconography in cinematic genres, the symbolic use of pre-existing music, and the evolving musical styles of film composers.
MUSC2664 Popular Music and the Moving Image

Credit points: 6 Teacher/Coordinator: Dr Charles Fairchild Session: Semester 1 Classes: 2 hour seminar/week Prerequisites: 18 junior credit points Assessment: Musical analysis 1000 words (20%); industrial critique 1000 words (20%);Listening and viewing test (20%); Final Project 3,000 words (30%); Participation (10%). Mode of delivery: Normal (lecture/lab/tutorial) day Faculty: Sydney Conservatorium of Music
The range of media channels through which we experience popular music has proliferated in recent years. The emotive power of music is used to tell stories, sell products and connect people to one another. This unit of study will analyse the use of popular music in a broad range of multimedia forms from film and television to video games and the use of digital media to disseminate a multitude of musical multimedia productions.
PHIL2658 Philosophy in Film

This unit of study is not available in 2020

Credit points: 6 Session: Semester 2 Classes: 1x2hr lecture/week, 1x1hr tutorial/week, 1x film screening/week Prerequisites: 12 credit points at 1000 level in Philosophy or 12 credit points at 1000 level in Film Studies Assessment: 1x500wd tutorial presentation (10%), 1x1500wd take-home assignment (30%), 1x2500wd essay (50%) and tutorial participation (10%) Mode of delivery: Normal (lecture/lab/tutorial) day Faculty: Arts and Social Sciences
This unit will use the screening and criticism of carefully chosen classical and contemporary films to raise important philosophical questions and to contribute to our response to them. Each film screening will be paired with a key philosophical question that is explored in the film and further investigated in class: problems of freedom, human action, democracy, crime, love, otherness, marriage, conversation, selfhood, and being human. The class will also explore some central questions in the philosophy of film.
SPAN2641 Filmmaking in the Latin American Context

Credit points: 6 Session: Semester 2 Classes: 1x2hr seminar/week Prerequisites: 12 credit points at 1000 level in Spanish and Latin American Studies or Film Studies Assessment: 1x1500wd research journal (30%), 1x10 minute Oral Presentation (15%), 1x2500wd Essay (40%), 1xacademic article review (10%), class participation (5%) Mode of delivery: Normal (lecture/lab/tutorial) day Faculty: Arts and Social Sciences
This unit, taught in English, will introduce you to Latin American film studies, comprising history, theory and criticism through the exploration of 'national' cinema industries. We will examine the history of film production of Mexico, Argentina, Chile and Brazil, looking at the cultural and socio-political context in which filmmaking should be placed. Apart from tracing the history of film production in such countries, we will be focusing on recent developments in this field from the 1990's to the present day.

3000-level units of study

Core
FILM3000 Cinematic Transformations

Credit points: 6 Session: Semester 2 Classes: 1x1hr lecture/week, 1x2hr seminar/week Prerequisites: 12 credit points at 2000 level in Art History or 12 credit points at 2000 level in Film Studies or 12 credit points at 2000 level in Digital Cultures or 12 credit points at 2000 level in Critical Studies Prohibitions: ARHT3601 Assessment: 1x500wd Digital Cinema: Project Proposal (15%), 1x1500wd Digital Cinema: Project (25%), 1x1000wd Digital Cinema: Project Critical Reflection (20%), 1x2000wd Research Essay (40%) Mode of delivery: Normal (lecture/lab/tutorial) day Faculty: Arts and Social Sciences
What is cinema in the twenty-first century? Where do we locate the essence of a medium that has undergone such a radical transformation? This course examines the intersection of film, digital cinema, and new media platforms such as YouTube, mobile cinemas, and virtual reality technologies. Where many have spoken of the death of cinema in a digital era, we will conceptualise the complexity of cinema's evolution from its earliest celluloid incarnation to the technologies of digital simulation.
Selective
FILM3003 Screening Reality Since the 1960s

Credit points: 6 Session: Semester 2 Classes: 1x1hr lecture/week, 1x2hr tutorial/week Prerequisites: 12 credit points at 2000 level in Film Studies Prohibitions: ARHT2673 Assessment: 1x1000wd Blog (25%), 1x2000wd Essay (40%), 1x1000wd Group Documentary Treatment (20%), 1x500wd Group Pitch (15%) Mode of delivery: Normal (lecture/lab/tutorial) day Faculty: Arts and Social Sciences
In the age of reality television and instantaneous sharing of social media, why do documentary's truth claims, and modes of representing reality, continue to be so compelling? This unit introduces students to the history and poetics of documentary cinema, its codes of realism and its reality effects. It focuses in particular on transformations since the 1960s, including the impacts of new film technologies, television, new media, computerisation and the Internet.
FILM3004 National and Transnational Cinema

Credit points: 6 Session: Semester 1 Classes: 1x1hr lecture/week, 1x2hr tutorial/week. Prerequisites: 12 credit points at 2000 level in Film Studies Assessment: 1x1000wd historical survey (20%), 1x1000wd formal/ stylistic analysis (20%), 1x2500wd research essay (60%) Mode of delivery: Normal (lecture/lab/tutorial) day Faculty: Arts and Social Sciences
What does it mean to acquire a global perspective on film? How does a global perspective on film affect our understanding of film culture? This unit surveys cinema from around the world to piece together a picture of film culture derived from the close analysis of contemporary film form, style criticism and theory. Particular focus will be placed on the complex relation of the film text and the film audience. How do films address multiple and diverse audiences from different places with different histories and identities?
ARHT3633 Contemporary Australian Art and Film

This unit of study is not available in 2020

Credit points: 6 Session: Semester 2 Classes: 1x1hr lecture/week, 1x2hr seminar/week Prerequisites: 12 credit points at 2000 level in Art History or 12 credit points at 2000 level in Film Studies or 12 credit points at 2000 level in Critical Studies Prohibitions: ARHT2633 Assessment: 1x2000wd equiv group curatorial project (40%), 1x2500wd essay (50%), participation (10%) Mode of delivery: Normal (lecture/lab/tutorial) day Faculty: Arts and Social Sciences
What are the current debates and issues driving Australian art and film? We explore contemporary studio practices through screenings, on-site gallery visits and the study of works in university and other local art and film collections.
ARHT3662 On Photography and the Wretched Screen

This unit of study is not available in 2020

Credit points: 6 Session: Semester 1 Classes: 1x2hr lecture/week, 1x1hr tutorial/week Prerequisites: 12 Senior credit points in Art History Prohibitions: ARHT2662 Assessment: 1x1000wd object analysis (25%), 1x500wd tutorial presentation (25%), 1x3000wd essay/exhibition proposal (50%) Mode of delivery: Normal (lecture/lab/tutorial) day Faculty: Arts and Social Sciences
This unit will draw on a wide range of photographic material, including university and museum collections, to examine the pivotal role of photography in recording and shaping our image-culture across diverse global contexts. The unit will engage with key debates to examine the social, cultural, theoretical, historical and art practice contexts of the photograph as an image and as an object. Key theories from Walter Benjamin to Hito Steyerl will be used to interrogate themes of memory, documentary and the real, witnessing, conflict, gender and sexuality, decolonisation, and the digital.
ARIN3630 Digital Arts

Credit points: 6 Session: Semester 2 Classes: 1x2hr lecture/week, 1x1hr seminar/week Prerequisites: 12 credit points at 2000 level in Digital Cultures or 12 credit points at 2000 level in Art History or 12 credit points at 2000 level in Film Studies or 12 credit points at 2000 level in Design Computing Prohibitions: ARIN2630 Assessment: 1x Participation (10%), 1x2000wd Essay (40%), 1x1500wd Review (30%), 1x1000wd Tutorial activity (20%) Mode of delivery: Normal (lecture/lab/tutorial) day Faculty: Arts and Social Sciences
Explore digital technologies in the visual and performing arts, film and popular culture to analyse how new media transform the ways art is made and experienced. Discuss and evaluate their technologies, aesthetics, and how audiences interact with, and even produce them.
ASNS3616 Japanese Cinema and Society

This unit of study is not available in 2020

Credit points: 6 Session: Semester 1 Classes: 1x2hr lecture/week, 1 film screening/week (film viewing is mandatory but can be organised by students independently) Prerequisites: 6 Senior credit points in Asian Studies or 18 Junior credit points including ENGL1011 Prohibitions: JPNS3675 Assessment: 3x1200wd total film blog (20%), 1x900wd film review (15%), 1x2400wd film essay (40%), 1x1.5hr semester exam (25%) Mode of delivery: Normal (lecture/lab/tutorial) day Faculty: Arts and Social Sciences
This unit introduces you to the history of Japanese film production with a focus on theory, criticism, and reception. Films will be discussed according to themes and genres and read in their socio-political contexts. It provides an initiated understanding of one of the most important film traditions in an international perspective.

Interdisciplinary project

Where this major is being completed as a first major towards a degree, students should ensure that the Interdisciplinary Impact unit of study is undertaken.
Where this major is being completed as a second major from the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences towards a degree, the Industry and Community Project unit of study is the appropriate unit to select.
FILM3999 Interdisciplinary Impact

Credit points: 6 Session: Intensive December,Intensive July,Semester 1,Semester 2 Prerequisites: Completion of at least 90 credit points Prohibitions: Interdisciplinary Impact in another major Mode of delivery: Normal (lecture/lab/tutorial) day Faculty: Arts and Social Sciences
Interdisciplinarity is a key skill in fostering agility in life and work. This unit provides learning experiences that build students' skills, knowledge and understanding of the application of their disciplinary background to interdisciplinary contexts. In this unit, students will work in teams and develop interdisciplinarity skills through problem-based learning projects responding to 'real world problems'.
FILM3998 Industry and Community Project

Credit points: 6 Session: Intensive February,Intensive July,Semester 1,Semester 2 Corequisites: Interdisciplinary Impact in any major. Mode of delivery: Normal (lecture/lab/tutorial) day Faculty: Arts and Social Sciences
This unit is designed for third year students to undertake a project that allows them to work with one of the University's industry and community partners. Students will work in teams on a real-world problem provided by the partner. This experience will allow students to apply their academic skills and disciplinary knowledge to a real-world issue in an authentic and meaningful way.