CTS463 : Film theory and appreciation / College of Creative Arts

This course introduces students to the understanding and appreciation of film as a medium of art. The course will focus broadly on two categories. The first part of the course deals with the concepts and principles of film form, film narrative as a formal system, and film aesthetics through mise-en-scene, cinematography, editing and sound. In this first part, students will be exposed to the basic appreciation and analysis of films’ formal elements from narrative to aesthetic style. In the second part, the course introduces early film theories such as realism and formalism, as well as contemporary theories that have developed within the academic discipline of film studies, e.g., genre, authorship (auteur), gender and feminism, and spectatorship (informed by psychoanalysis and cognitive science).