London Film Program

This course will encourage students to theorize and document their own experiences as visitors to London and, while rooted in the historical context of the early 20th century, use the genre of the city symphony as a prism through which to examine several key features of early cinema, from sound/silence to montage and visual language.

This intensive and comprehensive course will allow students to take an innovative approach that sees race, gender and class in close dialogue with the underlying cultural phenomena that shape the British cinematic landscape. The course is designed to introduce students to British cinema whilst engaging in theory, practice and analysis. It intertwines historical accounts with film screenings and lectures as well as discussions with filmmakers and curators.

The Global Internship Course is designed to be completed alongside an internship placement, allowing students to earn academic credit. Students will attend weekly, discussion-led sessions that include educational support and mentoring in a classroom environment; develop personal and professional skills, learn to contextualize their internship experience socially and culturally, and employ the use of Globally Networked Learning technology to conduct a comparative global analysis with other CAPA students. At times, this analysis will be facilitated through CAPA Masterclasses led by professionals in a diverse range of fields.

This course consists of two short seminar courses combined for a total of three credits. The class ‘Written in Disappearing Ink: Writing for the Screen(s)’ will cover the script building process itself from concept to story construction, outline and drafts, rewriting and the kind of ‘rewriting’ that is entailed by the production and post-production processes themselves. The second class revolves around representations of race, class and gender as depicted in three woman inflected films, all directed by women and made in very different contexts: the United States (1991), Iran (2002), and the UK (2010).

This course will examine science fiction, horror, and noir/neogothic cinema and television from all eras, with emphasis on works that give London a major role in their story. Students will analyze such examples as disaster or alien invasion films that see the city as a site of devastation, horror films which render a familiar city frightening and strange, or noir explorations of London’s underbelly.

This course will explore the camera as a tool for the excavation of ordinary things scattered in the urban spaces of a modern metropolis. Students will develop an understanding of a theoretical framework; gain a related practical skillset; take their camera out into the city of London for hands-on exercises; and participate in readings, screenings, and course discussions that will facilitate their ability to experience the city with a critical and documentary approach.