Course Overview

Your degree is a new programme from LICA. It recognises cinema's role as a major cultural form and investigates film through a variety of approaches. You'll examine cinema's aesthetic importance in the context of an increasingly visual and media orientated culture, while also investigating the intersections between contemporary art, theatre, music and film.

At Lancaster, film Studies isn't intended as a vocational course, however, all film students have the opportunity to make their own digital film. We have excellent technical resources, including the state-of-the-art digital editing equipment house in Lancaster University Television Unit.

You begin your degree with courses including Modernism in the Arts and an Introduction to film Studies. This module introduces you to a range of key critical approaches with an explicit focus on the meaning making structures and techniques of film. You will expand your knowledge and understanding of a wide range of Film-making traditions and be introduced to fundamental terms and concepts such as mise-en-scène, editing, narrative, acting, stardom, film sound and genre.

In addition, you'll explore the key areas of film aesthetics and Film history, including silent cinema, classical Hollywood cinema, French, German, Italian and Chinese cinema. In the third term, you will work in a small group to produce a multimedia presentation on a film topic.

In your second year, you'll study film Cultures and Documentary Cultures. Documentary Cultures uniquely combines the academic study of documentary cinema with the production of a short documentary video which will be informed by the theoretical and historical analysis of documentary styles and structures you learn about.

In your final year you will study one core module, Film Dissertation and Project. You will also choose between four and six optional modules from a selection including Contemporary Arts Theory and Film Theory.

Career opportunities

While this degree is not intended as a practical training programme in Film-making, recent Film Studies graduates have gone into production roles at the BBC and ITV, and jobs in advertising, marketing and media production.

Film Studies graduates are well placed to pursue postgraduate vocational training in media-related professions, such as broadcast and print journalism, or take their skills into promotional and marketing roles.

Many of our graduates go on to further vocational training in Film production, including the prestigious New York Film Academy and London Film School. Some Film Studies graduates have gone into teaching, or pursued further study and research in Film.