MA Film Curating
Modules
Production/Distribution/Exhibition
Film can rarely be separated from its commercial or industrial context. It is not an art form first and an industrial activity second, nor is it, as more normally assumed in an academic context, art first and industry second: it is both at the same time. The Production/Distribution/Exhibition course is the core strand of the MA and it introduces students to the structure of the contemporary film industry, seeks to make them aware of the changes it is currently undergoing, and helps them develop skills backed up by a fund of knowledge, both theoretical and practical, which will enable them to operate effectively in either the industry or the institutional sector. More importantly, it should help them navigate between the two. Issues covered include: the development of ‘Hollywood’ as a distribution mechanism (an aspect of film history traditionally overlooked even by those who seek to focus on the economic aspects of the medium); the subsequent emergence of a less obviously commercial sector, often referred to as ‘arthouse’; the role of the film festival as cultural event, commercial shopwindow, tourist magnet or networking opportunity; the current context of film curating and programming; and the relationship between practice, critical discourse and concepts of curating.
This course is made up of two sessions, one consisting of a screening-and-lecture format; the other operating on a seminar basis, exploring theoretical issues and drawing on the expertise of a number of established experts and practitioners. The module runs over two terms, in the course of which students will gain first-hand knowledge of contemporary film curation through privileged access to certain film festivals. As part of the training offered by this module, students curate a film or film-related event.
Director Strategies
This course gives students a firm understanding of contemporary critical strategies in relation to film auteurship, genre and aesthetic style and a rigorous understanding of cinema using an approach which privileges the filmmaker and his or her strategies. Strategies are defined as patterns of decisions which seem to be expressed in the films, which could be consciously used by directors working within limitations and conventions. These strategies are identified by showing and differentiating films made by particular classic directors or films made in particular strong aesthetic or social contexts. The course encourages students to understand director strategies within the context of a wide variety of theoretical concepts, from Walter Benjamin, Bazin, Freud, Melanie Klein, Levinas, Stanley Cavell, to contemporary Aristotelian ethics and Surrealism.
Research Skills and Methods
In this course, students are presented with the information and expertise necessary to find their way around the increasingly diverse and specialised fields of knowledge and information in contemporary culture, and to communicate their arguments and findings to academic and other audiences. Students will be both familiarised with the intellectual conditions under which interdisciplinary research in culture is undertaken, and encouraged in critical analysis of those conditions. Lectures include:
What Is Interdisciplinary Research?
Why Argue?
Looking: Visual Resource and Analysis
This course is also a component of the London Consortium’s MRes and PhD programme in Humanities and Cultural Studies. MA Film Curating students will be taught alongside students of those two programmes.
Curating Theory and Practice
Curating is a term that has emerged out of the art world into wider usage. With particular attention to the increasing presence of the moving image in art galleries and museums, this seminar course considers curatorial theory and practice in the contemporary art world.
The course predominantly consists of seminars with practitioners, including artists and critics, but in particular curators. Through discussion with curators working in museums of modern art, in publicly funded temporary exhibition venues and in commercial galleries, the differing contexts of art world curatorship will be explored. The course displays and questions the ideas, assumptions and political economy of art world curatorship. Amongst the questions raised by the course are:
How does the economy of art work?
What are the values that underpin public sector support for art?
Who are the audiences for art?
What are the considerations that come into play in selecting work for exhibition or purchase?
What factors are in play in the differing ways art is displayed?
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